


Hello, Half-Blood Prince

by ac1d6urn (Acid), Sinick



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Correspondence, M/M, Multimedia, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-07-23
Updated: 2010-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/ac1d6urn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinick/pseuds/Sinick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the end of Harry Potter's seventh year. With the aid of the Order of the Phoenix Harry has defeated Voldemort, and the Wizarding World is now free. Meanwhile, in a Muggle town a snowy owl finds a fugitive from Wizarding Justice. What news does its letter bring?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Road to Spinner’s End

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Half-Blood Prince is an on-going Harry/Snape project created and maintained by Acid (who contributes by spending too much time with computer graphics programs and channelling Harry Potter) and Sinick (who is responsible for impersonating Libatius Borage and other shady characters with a flair for Advanced Potion-Making).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's End — 15th July, 1998

  


  
A scrawny man, his drab clothes blending into the dirty greys of the streets, trudged up a narrow alley as night fell, heading for the last house in Spinner’s End. He was sick, from the last three days’ lack of sleep and from the months before that: desperate months of trying to disappear into Muggle crowds, fleeing the notice of anyone who might possibly be an Auror, or any wizard willing to capture a traitor. There was no wind in the cramped maze of abandoned row houses, and although the sun had set at last, the cobbled streets still radiated heat. The man’s skin itched under a layer of sweat and grime, and his hair hung in greasy hanks around his face. The stifling heat, the dank stench of the river, the crushing feeling of being surrounded by thousands of Muggles made his spine crawl.

The man had been careful, more than careful to leave no record of this place at the Ministry or the Order, so there should have been no reason to worry. Yet he knew that nowhere was safe for him, not any more. Not for long. If the Ministry and Harry Potter wanted to find him, then sooner or later, they would: it was as simple and as final as that. He planned to stay there another day and then move on. Where? He had not yet decided; he knew that the longer in advance plans are made, the greater their chances of being discovered, anticipated, thwarted.

Something flickered, pale against the darkening sky. Instinctively he ducked into the dubious shelter of a boarded-up front door. He clung to the shadows, his bony shoulder-blades grinding against the brick of the niche as he stared out. _What was it? False alarm?_ His gaze flicked from one possible place of concealment to the next, but he saw no one. Not that _that_ meant anything. His palm was slick with cold sweat as he whipped his wand out of his sleeve and traced a wide circle around him, frantically muttering his own modification of the Foe-glass charm under his breath. The charm would see through Invisibility cloaks and Disillusionment charms to alert him to the presence of any who wished him ill... yet still, all was quiet.

Another glint of white. A snowy owl was circling past the streetlamps and the low roofs. It glided lower and lower. The man shrank back into the shadows, his wand clutched in a grip tight enough to betray the tremor in his hands, as he scanned again and again for the Aurors or the Hit Wizards or the Order, who he knew now _must_ be closing in on him.

There was no mistaking that owl. Somewhere nearby Potter was laughing at him, sending his bird to hunt him down, as a distraction, as a prophecy of what was to come: silent wings spectre-white against the gloom, an omen of retribution and death. The Aurors used owls to track down criminals during the Dark Times, just by sending them a letter. He had hidden himself long ago from such simple methods of detection; he knew he had. But somehow Potter had found him all the same, and death could not be far behind.

The owl swooped down, its spread wings spanning the narrow doorway. It landed with an impact like a punch to his shoulder, dropping its letter which fell at his feet. But he spared owl and note not a glance, not even when the owl changed its stance on his shoulder so that it too was facing out into the street, and shook out its feathers as if settling down for a long stay.

_Anytime now..._ he concentrated and faced the inevitable. Silence lingered, stretched, until the suspense was a torment all its own. His breathing grew louder and louder and his tremors spread from his wand hand through his whole weary body as he waited for his long-delayed doom to arrive.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Absolutely _nothing_.

At long last, he was almost sure that the owl hadn’t brought attackers or even its master with it.

His mouth twitched in a parody of a smirk as he realised that this hour – huddled in the doorway of the abandoned row house, trembling with desperate weariness and the terror of imminent death – wasn’t even the worst hour of his relatively-short existence.

All along, the persistent bird had sat on his shoulder. For the first time, the man had leisure to feel grateful that he had worn his coat, despite the heat; if he hadn’t, those talons would no doubt have gouged holes in his shoulder by now. He twitched said shoulder irritably; the owl only gripped tighter, giving an equally irritable shriek and glaring pointedly at the letter it had dropped. Instinctively he followed the direction of its gaze. The letter could hardly be called that: there was no envelope or address. It was a single page ripped out of a book and folded into a triangle, and in a space bare of type was scrawled a single word: Snape.

Snape pointed his wand at the bit of paper, hitting it with a barrage of charms aimed at detecting all the curses, hexes, jinxes, potions, poisons and tracking charms he knew, but test after test drew a total blank. At last he turned his head, exchanging an almost beak-to-beak glare with the owl still sitting on his shoulder.

“Don’t you have somewhere _else_ to be?” he inquired sardonically. When the owl still wouldn’t budge, he bent to snatch up the letter with such suddenness that he unbalanced the bird, which flapped off with a speed that suggested it was glad to go. He stood and watched the gleam of white wings, circling over the alley and finally heading north. Only when the owl had disappeared into the darkness, did he finish the walk down the length of the alley. He unlocked the door to the very last house, slipping inside and shutting out the night with locks both magical and mundane.

He unfolded the yellowed page in the light of a single candle, and at once he knew which book it had come from: his mother’s Advanced Potion-Making textbook that he had used as his research diary in sixth year. The page contained one of his usual sarcastic observations penned in the obsessively cramped script of his schooldays: this one was on the trifling potions and charms which were the closest analogues to the dreaded Morsmordre. The cheap ink had faded; some of his words had gone grey with time. But there were also new lines, scrawled hastily at the top of the page in fresh ink. Lines in a hand that, though he hadn’t seen it for quite a while, he recognised well enough.

> Obvious to you, but not to anyone else! This note was just what the Order needed to trace the location of the Morsmordre's casters and then reflect all that burning energy right back at the bastards.  
> Thanks.
> 
> Ironic that such an utterly trivial potion is obviously analogous not only to the equally trivial Wand Sparks charm, but also to the notorious Morsmordre: all three simply convert the energy of the caster's Will to a more visible form, via the incineration of dust motes. The Dark Mark is further empowered by ritual sacrifice: the death-by-immolation of countless airborne organisms, micro- and macroscopic.
> 
> *** SCINTILLATING SOLUTION *  
> Scintillating Solution**, though oft-dismissed as the province of mere _Squibs_, shall be shewn herein to be a Potion not to be disdained by the Worthy Student, inasmuch as such Solutions are undeniably the source of munificent incomes for those Potion-Makers inclined to the creation of various and sundry cosmetic preparations; for well is it observed that none hath ever descended into penury by catering to the manifold and endless vanities of Humankind.  
> Though the Method of Preparation is not unduly taxing to even the less-Advanced...

  
The added message conveyed interesting news, to be sure, but it was the Thanks. that Snape saw first. He stared down at the note in his hand, stunned. There was no signature, but Snape didn’t need one. There was no other person who could’ve written this.

_Potter,_ he thought. _At least this means the nitwit kept my textbook after all; kept it and **used** it. It also means that there just might be a glorious absence of Aurors and Hit Wizards in my immediate future. Perhaps Dumbledore’s pensieve survived, and they’ve finally managed to lift the charm securing it, now that the Dark Lord is gone. Or perhaps the Order has finally put two and two together and for once hasn’t come up with five._

Frankly, Snape didn’t care one way or the other. Not right then. All he cared about was that, at the moment, he was apparently safe. Potter had clearly known where he was, and had done _nothing_ to him. For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, he didn’t have to watch his back and hide from every suspicious stranger. Without thinking or wondering any more about the letter, he toppled onto his narrow bed like a felled tree.

_Finally, some **peace.**_

He was asleep before the smoke of the blown-out candle had time to dissipate into the humid, dusty air.

He didn’t wake until noon the next day.

 

 


	2. The Road to Spinner’s End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's End — 9th August, 1998

Snape hadn’t expected to stay this long in the house at Spinner’s End. He hadn’t expected to have the time to grow accustomed again to the musty scent of the old floorboards, or to the silence of the half-abandoned alley. Yet after a while he found himself reluctant to move on. It wasn’t sentimentality (which he always found unpleasant) or childhood memories (which he usually found worse) that kept him from gathering his modest belongings and walking away. Snape simply had no other place to go, so he stayed.

In the mornings he toasted bread with his wand, and heated water for coffee on the old Muggle stove as his father had always done. The kitchen was no bigger than a cupboard, but he sidled through the narrow gap between the table and the cabinets as easily now as he had when he was a boy: scrawny and slump-shouldered and trying to take up as little space as possible in the house. Then, after his coffee was made, he’d tilt back on the rickety chair and stretch out his bony legs, and occupy much more kitchen space by sitting down and relaxing than he ever did standing up.

Staying here in his father’s abandoned house was the closest he’d come to freedom in a long while; what wouldn’t he have done for a chance like this a few years ago? This temporary bolt-hole, this one hideout among many, was day by quiet day beginning to become something else as well: a home. Even this solitude felt more homelike to him than his parents’ constant warfare. Perhaps it was time, at long last, for him to stop and look around and try to make a new start for himself. This was the first time in years that he could afford to hope he might no longer be a hunted man, whose reaction to every passer-by was shadowed by the constant threat of discovery, capture, torment, death.

He allowed himself the luxury of a whole day doing nothing but sorting through his mother’s old Potions cabinet: dusting and rearranging the phials, and replacing the faded, curled-up labels on those ingredients that could still be salvaged. The rest of them he poured into the earth, to the quiet, plainsong chant of purifying charms; or else he carefully cast them into a fireplace lit just for that occasion. As he puttered away, sitting cross-legged before the cabinet, phials and boxes in a circle on the floor all around him, he wrote a list of those discarded ingredients. The following day, he donned a combination of magical and Muggle disguises and purchased as many items on that list as he could afford from the shady stores of Knockturn Alley, where the shopkeepers had long since learned not to ask questions nor to look twice at their customers.

Once, just before dawn, he even risked Apparating into the middle of Diagon Alley, dropping a Daily Prophet subscription note and the seven knuts’ fee for the first issue in the mail slot in their front door, and Disapparating the next moment before he could catch anyone’s eye. He hadn’t _quite_ been able to bring himself to use his own name for the subscription: old habits died hard, and the trip itself had been as much of a breach of security as he could bear. He settled instead on an alias that, by his standards, was blindingly obvious. 1

> Friday,  
> 9th August,  
> 1998.
> 
>   
> To the Subscriptions Officer of  
> **The Daily Prophet,**  
> Diagon Alley,  
> London.
> 
>  
> 
> Dear Sir or Madam,
> 
> I would like to subscribe to the Daily Prophet, **excluding** the Evening and Sunday editions, at the standard rate of **7 knuts an issue,** to be delivered by Owl Post to
> 
>  
> 
> **I. Principe,  
> The Last House In Spinner’s End,  
> Halifax,  
> Yorkshire.**

 

 

  
Sorting through the bookshelves later that day, he found some Muggle banknotes, hidden away between the pages of Exodus 22 in his father’s Bible – verse 18 had been underlined: a thick, red reminder of his father’s clemency – and with this windfall he bought enough groceries and coffee to last him the week. During that same trip to the local market he also bought three white mice: as test subjects, of course. When he returned to Spinner’s End, he put the mice into a small wire cage – which he had thoroughly cleaned of the skeletal remains of its previous inhabitants – and put the cage on top of the cabinet, safe from the volatile ingredients within.

> . . . money according to the dowry of virgins.  
> 18\. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.  
> 19\. Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.  
> 20\. He that sacrificeth unto any . . .

 

*

  
Next morning he woke to screeching and flapping outside. Even as the first noise was registering, he had already pulled his wand from under his pillow; he aimed the wand at the noise in pure nervous reflex, as he blinked the crust of sleep from his eyes. By the leaden quality of the light, it was only just past dawn. He stomped downstairs, cracking the front door open by just enough of a gap that he could squint blearily at the noise.

Two birds were in the midst of a dramatic fight in the empty alley, sending a whirlwind of feathers flying in the stagnant air. A snowy owl which looked suspiciously familiar snapped and shoved as its much-smaller brown opponent shrieked and fluttered, indignant as an old Pureblood witch robbed of wand and galleons on the sunlit steps of Gringotts in front of a street full of witnesses. As Snape opened the door a little wider to stare at the battle, the snowy owl wrestled away the post-owl’s parcel and shooed its victim off with the puffed-up body and unblinking stare of an experienced bully. The snowy owl then took a victor’s perch at the very top of the broken streetlamp near Snape’s door, and shook out its ruffled feathers in triumph. As it moved, the parcel partially unrolled, revealing itself to be a rather war-torn copy of the Daily Prophet.

_Probably not the first time it’s stolen mail,_ Snape thought sourly. _No doubt it expects to be rewarded for work its victims have already done. Perhaps Potter’s usual correspondents have already noticed the bird’s thieving ways, and that’s why it’s chosen me to steal from. After all,_ Snape concluded with a smirk, _of everyone Potter’s ever written to, I’m the one least likely to write back._

Meanwhile, the post-owl had just managed to find a perch on the narrow sill of one of his upstairs windows; the bedraggled little bird gave him a woebegone ‘woo-oo-oo’ that sounded like a sobbed apology.

_This daylight robbery simply has to stop._

He pulled his coat on over his grey, frayed nightshirt, opened his door all the way, glared up at the streetlamp, and silently extended his arm. The snowy owl gave a dismissive little click of its beak and closed its eyes, ostentatiously ignoring him, even as its talons dug deeper into the stolen newspaper.

Snape lifted his arm a bit higher and arched an eyebrow.

The owl slyly opened one eye a slit, then closed it again, making itself comfortable on its perch by using the paper as padding for its feet: clearly the bird wasn’t about to budge without getting its _quid pro quo_.

_Stubborn creature!_ Snape manfully restrained himself from casting an _Accio_, followed by something even more satisfying such as a _Tarantallegra_ or an _Incendio Minimus_. Unfortunately, the news would travel as fast as an owl with singed tail feathers or dancing feet, and then Potter would make his Heroic Entrance Wand A-Blazing, probably with a backup team of crack Aurors (or cracked, in Moody’s case) all of whom would no doubt be eager to burn his house down in retribution, preferably with him in it; and all because Snape had attempted to teach Potter’s bird the good manners it so desperately needed!

“Bring me my paper this instant, you wretched bird!”

The owl turned its back on Snape, ruffled its feathers, and then expressed its opinion of Snape’s order in even more ...emphatic terms: he had to sidestep quick-smart to avoid being splattered. Snape wondered if Potter had neglected to feed the bird; perhaps its owner’s carelessness had driven the creature to piracy on the high skies. Still, it was a bird of prey; why in Merlin’s name couldn’t it hunt for itself? Perhaps Potter’s laziness was contagious.

He was just drawing breath to start in on a particularly lengthy and therapeutic description of exactly what was wrong with the owl’s family tree, not to mention its owner’s, when the owl suddenly abandoned its pretence of sleepiness and stared intently down, at him or perhaps a little past him. Abruptly the owl dropped the newspaper, which landed with a thwack on the cobbled street. For a moment Snape thought the blasted bird had finally obeyed him, but instead it swooped straight past him, almost smacking him in the face with a wingtip as it dived through the opened door of his house...

...to snatch up the smallest of his white mice, which had only a few moments ago barely managed to squeeze through the bars of the cage and escape. Snape’s swearing lunge to intercept the owl’s grab was too late; its talons closed, and without even time for a squeak, the small rodent was just a memory.

Still grumbling under his breath, Snape strode outside and made a similarly-greedy grab for the Daily Prophet, before eyeing the post-owl huddled miserably on the windowsill. He waved it over and dug through the pockets of his coat for the seven knuts it was due. “Here,” he said, dropping the coins into the pouch tied to its leg and shooing it off. “I don’t suggest you come back unless you’re prepared to face another fight and win next time. Meanwhile I’ll find someone else to take over the delivery work.” The post-owl squawked indignantly at him and took off in a literal and figurative flap. Snape gave its distant silhouette in the sky a disapproving look and went back in.

“If you want any more meals around here, you’ll have to bloody well work for them,” he announced. The owl, perched atop the back of his chair, eyed the cage with the two remaining mice, and did its best to appear soft and fluffy and generally agreeable.

So much for the ‘wisdom’ of owls: this one was clearly too stupid to avoid the dangers of eating prey likely to be contaminated by prototype Potions, but at least it was a large bird with plenty of fighting spirit. Whatever the creature’s faults – and after this morning, Snape could have listed them at great and vindictive length – Snape still preferred to deal with an owl who was likely to win any wrestling matches, far more than he welcomed having his mail stolen by a stronger bird. And after all, he hadn’t been Head of Slytherin all those years for nothing. The House of the Serpent ran on the principle of “You scratch my back, I’ll consider not stabbing yours.” Accordingly, he fixed the owl with the same stern glower he’d used to such good effect on decades of students. “I shall expect the Daily Prophet no later than nine,” he declared loftily, “and in return you can have your share of whatever I’m having for breakfast. And today’s insolence will _not_ be repeated.” The round white head bobbed in a nod, then with a flap and a long smooth glide, the owl was out the door and gone.

*

  
The owl returned at eleven with the Evening Prophet – which he certainly hadn’t ordered – and, to his equal surprise, a triangular note written on suspiciously familiar-looking yellowed paper. Snape strode outside, arms lifted for the parcels, but the owl kept circling the alley, flatly refusing to relinquish its mail or even to perch, until an exasperated Snape flung the front door wide open in preparation for storming back inside. _Then_ the infuriating bird swooped right in and landed on the back of his chair again. “If I have to clean up after you,” he grumbled, pointedly eyeing the chairback and the threadbare rug beneath, “I’ll _Scourgify_ you so hard Potter will name you Bubbles.”2 That necessary warning out of the way, he settled into his chair; despite his harsh words, he moved with sufficient care so as not to dislodge the bird.

When he unrolled the Prophet, his hands froze. Draco gazed up at him from the front page.

> **Died in Attempted Escape from Azkaban       **  
> Earlier today, Draco Malfoy died . . .   
> fell from the window of his cell . . .   
> onto the rocks at the base of Az . . .   
> Believed to have been instantane . . .   
> For use of the Imperius Curse, . . .   
> Rosmerta, to commit unlawful . . .   
> use of Morsmordre, use of a cu . . .   
> grievous magical harm to Katie . . .   
> Death Eaters into Hogwarts S . . .   
> supporter of You-Know-Who, . . .   
> Malfoy was sentenced to **Imprisonment Until Death** . . .

 

  
**Died in Attempted Escape from Azkaban**, the headline tolled. The words **fell** and **rocks** prickled at the corners of his eyes, but he couldn’t look away from that sombre stare.

His fingers brushed across the paper, a tiny, stroking touch, remembering hair like spidersilk; even in the photograph it was still somehow whiter than the page itself.

*

  
For half the night, he wandered from room to room, unable to sleep. Draco had just turned eighteen in June. The youngest Marked in his generation, just as Snape had been. Two months ago he’d been complaining to his godfather that it was the first year he wouldn’t receive a gift for his birthday. Severus had promised to make it up to him somehow. With Lucius gone, who else was left to take care of the boy? But now... He never did get Draco the gift he’d promised. It was too late, in any case. There was nothing he could do. Nothing anyone could ever do again.

At last, his restless meanderings brought him to his mother’s Potions cabinet, and atop it the cage with two white mice which he’d bought as test subjects: the cage which just this morning had held three.

He stared intently at the remaining two mice, and contemplated the fate of the remaining captured Death Eaters. _Imprisonment until death._ With wizarding lifespans, perhaps a hundred and fifty years in a cold stone cage.

_Perhaps Draco was the lucky one. He found freedom again, at the end._

*

  
Only much later could he bring himself to look again at the table where the newspaper lay; even then he reached for the note that had come with it, instead of the paper itself. He did this not so much out of any real curiosity about the contents of the note, but more out of a numbed desire to avoid, for a few more moments, the knowledge of the grisly events that the article would describe with such glee: how Draco had been captured, convicted, imprisoned, all while he himself had still been on the run.

As he unfolded the note, he knew that his first guess had been correct: it was another page ripped out from his sixth-year textbook. Potter really did mistreat books dreadfully. On the page beside his notes on _Sectumsempra_ – “for enemies” – Potter had written:

>   
> _ **Sectumsempra!  
> For enemies ** _
> 
> _224                                                                 Advanced Potion-Making_
> 
> _ **They summoned me to Malfoy’s trial as a witness for the prosecution. I was the one who told them about the cupboards and Borgin &amp; Burkes. I ** _ _ **had** _ _ ** to. They used Veritaserum on all the witnesses. He was a snobbish git, but he didn’t deserve to die. I’m sorry.** _
> 
> Much patience and work is required in the preparation of this Potion, and the usual slovenly half-efforts to which students are all-too-sadly prone, will most assuredly reap due recompense in a Potion that is not only a failure, but positively incendiary. The Worthy Student will first of all ensure that the Occamy-shell is polished to an immaculate lustre, as the slightest imperfection in the reflective surface of the shell will concentrate the thaumaturgical energies unevenly upon the silver, resulting in a . . . 
> 
>  

_It truly is dreadful,_ he thought, the word sticking in his weary mind. _Out of the two young men I swore to protect – in different ways, under different circumstances – one is dead, a Death Eater, convicted for his crimes... and the other is the Man-Who-Lived-And-Saved-Us-All, and there may well be no crime he could commit that would be grave enough for our world to convict him. Which of these is the more dreadful outcome? Which is more full of dread to me?_

Abruptly, he realised that Potter was in even more need of a lesson in manners than his bird.

_He has to learn,_ Snape thought, _that no matter how much the rest of the Wizarding world worships him, there’s at least one wizard who’s already had more than enough of Lords – Light and Dark – for one lifetime. No: the others may delight in excusing his every deed, just as the Muggles forgive their gods, but there are some transgressions **I** will not pardon._

Quickly, before he could change his mind, he summoned the copy of _Common Curses and Cures_ that he’d never opened since he memorised its contents from cover to cover at the age of nine. He tore out one page, flipped to another, tore that one out as well, and started writing.

> _Common Curses and Cures                                                        57_
> 
> * PHOENIX TEARS * 
> 
> The Phoenix is pure and noble above all birds, embodying as it does the highest aspirations of the Human Spirit. It is a creature possessed of many subtle and puissant virtues: it will not be fatigued by burdens, however heavy or coarse. No Dark Art will suffice to prevent a Phoenix from coming to the aid of those fortunate wizards whom this sacred bird has adopted. 
> 
> Its tears are popularly thought to constitute a _Panacea_ against all of the ills to which human flesh is heir. Yet, though it is true that many grievous and even mortal hurts may receive miraculous healing at the slightest touch of Phoenix Tears, still there are wounds that even Phoenix Tears are powerless to heal. 
> 
> ** _Do not imagine that your condolences can make it all better._ **
> 
> The Phoenix is an immensely loyal creature: it may be summoned over limitless ... 

 

 

> _  
> Common Curses and Cures                                                       25_ 
> 
>  
> 
> ** _Furthermore, keep a closer eye on your pets in future. Teach that blasted owl of yours to leave others’ mail alone, or I’ll use it for a feather duster._ **
> 
> * THIEF’S CURSE * 
> 
> Justice is, in general, sadly difficult to procure in this flawed world. However, the adept Witch or Wizard may find comfort in the knowledge that – though one’s goods may be gone beyond recovery – the thief is nevertheless suffering retribution at a distance from the rightful owner’s Curse. 
> 
> _Rightful ownership_ is, of course, absolutely indispensable to the successful casting of a Thief’s Curse: so much so that, if the object to be protected is jointly owned, all owners must cast simultaneously. Thus, a Thief’s Curse is used only for the protection of personal property; indeed, the more intense the owner’s emotional attachment to the object, the more virulent and durable the resulting Curse. 

 

  
Afterwards, he whistled down the owl from its perch on the broken streetlamp. “Here,” he scrawled the single name on the cover and held it up. “Take it to your owner.” The bird snatched it hastily, drawing blood from his fingertip in the process. “You’re a matching pair,” he grumbled as the bird took off, “You both bite the hand that feeds you.” He squinted into the sun as he watched the owl fly away, and supposed that life was still just what he expected it to be.

* * *

1: Snape’s minimum-security pseudonym is, of course, taken from the title (in the original Italian) of Machiavelli’s magnum opus: [_The Prince_](http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/machiavelli/niccolo/m149p/), or _Il Principe_.  
_  
_  
2: In years past in the UK, a children’s bubble bath was sold in owl-shaped bottles: it rejoiced in the name of “Bubbles the Owl”.


	3. Crosswords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — 7th September, 1998

Harry Potter was wakened by a one-sided tug-of-war: someone was playing with his fringe. He forced his left eye open and tried for ‘What the bloody hell d’you think you’re doing?’ though all he actually managed to say was “Mhh-uh?”

The tugging didn’t stop.

He squinted. The sharp talons in his pillow an inch away from his nose came more-or-less into focus. As he blinked blurrily at the way they’d pierced the cloth, a hard beak plucked at another strand of hair and yanked it to lie straight behind his ear.

Harry groaned and swatted. “Lemmesleep!”

The owner of the beak continued poking and prodding. It was a wonder Harry hadn’t gone bald. He grunted and turned over, hoping to escape the avian inquisition. But even as he hauled the blanket over his head, he knew better than that.

Hedwig tugged the blanket off his face completely and gave him a glare of yellow-eyed disgust. Harry let out a long-suffering sigh and opened his other eye. “S’too bloody early!” he complained, pulling the blanket back. _It’s mine, dammit! And it isn’t even sunrise yet!_

But Hedwig dug her talons into the blanket for support, wings a-flapping, and didn’t give up until Harry fumbled on the nightstand (sending his glasses clattering to the floor), grabbed the folded sheet of paper he’d written on yesterday evening and threw it at her. “Here. Mail,” he muttered into the pillow. “Now go’way.”

He heard her flap off through the open window and buried his head further underneath the pillow. (Unlike his owl, he didn’t do mornings.) _The greasy git’s right, she needs to learn some manners. She can bloody well find someone else to bother till noon._

*

  
The owl puffed its chest and scowled at Snape from its perch on the far side of the kitchen table. Snape leaned forward and matched its beaky glare with one of his own. “You’ve already had your share,” he informed the bottomless pit on wings.

The owl changed tactics, deflating its feathers and trying its best to look thin and starved, as if it hadn’t just devoured a good solid half of Snape’s breakfast.

Snape arched his eyebrow. _If the little beggar expects more bacon, it certainly needs to do a better job than this._ “Toast?”

The owl turned up its beak at the toast, instead giving an interested glance first at the solitary piece of bacon on his plate and then at his remaining boiled egg.

“You don’t want it,” he informed the bird. “It’s an owl egg.”

The owl hooted sceptically, giving the impression that yes, frankly, it did very much want it, wherever it came from.

As Snape cut up his one remaining rasher, he and the bird stared at each other across his kitchen table like duellists facing off across a field of combat. After a moment of deliberation, he started eating his bacon enthusiastically as the owl glowered. He left a piece just big enough not to get his hand injured while baiting a bird of prey. Then he cautiously held out the bacon. Just as he expected, the owl lunged. He grabbed his egg with his free hand while the bird snapped at the bit of crispy rasher.

He had no further interest in watching the ingrate glare at him or his now-empty plate, so he unfolded the pages of the Daily Prophet in front of him, blocking the bird from view. Under the newspaper’s cover, he opened the other mail the owl had brought him: an advertisement torn out of a magazine then scribbled over in a hand that was already very familiar.

>   
> Hedwig doesn’t make a very good feather duster. Trust me, I tried! 
> 
> **TOMMY TYTO’S TASTY TREATS!** 
> 
> But if you want to bribe her, she likes these. 
> 
> Now with Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts! (owl consumption only) 
> 
> Or mice. 

  
Snape folded down the Daily Prophet and narrowed his eyes at the owl, who was making a great show of hungrily pecking at the tabletop in search of nonexistent crumbs. _“Hedwig?”_ he repeated, unable to believe Potter’s lamentable taste in names. He almost pitied the bird.

The owl’s head swivelled toward him. She shook her feathers out and settled down on the table, white and fluffy, looking as innocent as a puffskein.

“You don’t fool me,” Snape declared loftily, “I already know what you’re capable of.”

Hedwig gave him a golden-eyed, trusting look and crooned softly.

Snape hmphed and glared back. “Don’t expect second helpings every morning. And Hedwig’s a hopelessly unsuitable name; Potter might mistake you for a saint, but I know better! As far as I’m concerned, you’re better off as Bubbles.”

Hedwig preened contentedly: apparently this arrangement was just fine by her. Having said his piece, Snape ignored her and returned his attention to the Daily Prophet. When Hedwig completed her morning grooming, she gave a short hop-and-flap and settled on the back of his chair, peeking over his shoulder at the paper. Snape glanced at the advertisements section. Stars sparkled, words trembled and shone and ran in circles, arrows flashed and pointed at the headings. _Absolutely atrocious!_ He glared accusingly at the owl. After all, she was responsible for delivering it.

Far from appearing suitably chastened, the shameless bird actually leaned closer. Snape thought she must have been attracted by all the movement on the page, until without warning a stray strand of hair above his ear was _tweaked_. Snape jumped to his feet with a cry, glaring down at her in high dudgeon. In return he received only a ‘Who, me?’ look, wide-eyed as only an owl can manage. But when he sat down and resumed reading, it wasn’t long before another strand of his hair was given a soft, sly tug.

“I have no idea why you’d want to put your beak anywhere near me,” he muttered crossly. “Daft bloody bird.” But for all his grumbling he didn’t move until the owl had rearranged all the bed-tangled strands to her satisfaction. Only when she’d subsided – with a coo he could swear sounded smug – did he finally leave the kitchen.

He came back with a Muggle book on birds, and after some searching ripped out a page. He scrawled his message hastily and folded it in half.

>   
> _The Standard Book of British Birds (Unexpurgated)            355_ 
> 
> ** _She is your owl. YOU bribe her! _ **
> 
> Snowy Owl _Nyctea scandiaca_ 
> 
> As its name suggests, the Snowy Owl is native to the Arctic Tundra, not to Britain, and so is included here for the sake of completeness, and because occasional individuals stray to our shores, chiefly Northern Scotland. There is currently one known resident pair, in the Shetland island of Fetlar. 
> 
> Since the Tundra is mostly treeless, Snowy Owls build their nests on the ground, though they prefer rocky, elevated sites. The female lines the nest with dry leaves and Owl feathers. 
> 
> ** _Postscriptum: Kindly inform her that my hair is NOT among the officially-approved building materials! _ **

 

*

  
“See that?” Harry asked, holding the page on Phoenix Tears right against his nose and afterwards up to Fawkes’ beak. “‘A creature possessed of many subtle and puissant virtues,’” he quoted. “Yeah, that’s s’posed to be you. And _then_ Snape turns right around and calls Hedwig a bloody thief! Right here!” he pointed at the writing in green on the other page. “What? I wouldn’t lie! You remember Professor Snape, don’t you?”

Fawkes gleamed at Harry and attempted to clean his beak on the phoenix printed on the page. Harry pulled the page back and waved his hands about. “Why do I even bother? You’re as bad as Hedwig.” _Actually Hedwig’s been better in the past few days,_ Harry realised. _At least she’s not moping anymore or giving Fawkes jealous looks. Come to think of it, she hasn’t been around as much. Maybe she’s found herself a friend in the Owlery._

“Er, have you seen my glasses?” Harry asked Fawkes a minute later as he pulled a shirt over his head. A horrifying crunch preceded the answer. Harry jumped, then spun round and bent down, one arm through the shirt-sleeve, another trying to unbutton the collar halfway, and groaned. “Forget the glasses, have you seen my wand?”

Several blindly-cast _Reparo_ charms later, Harry sat down at the desk with a scone in his teeth, balancing a cup of tea on his lap and trying to make some room for it on the desk surface. He’d only just managed to clear a bit of space by moving some stacks of books off the table and onto the floor, when Hedwig swooped in the window and dropped a big pile of letters right onto the cleared patch.

Harry sifted through them. ‘To the Boy Who Lived’ said one. ‘To Harry Potter, the Saviour of the Wizarding World’ proclaimed another. “All rubbish,” he sighed after a while, looking up at Hedwig. “Thanks a lot! I s’pose there’s no chance you could take them all back, is there?”

Hedwig merely ‘tsk’ed at him from her perch on the windowsill, and resumed cleaning her talons.

“Thought so.”

After ten minutes of stacking the new letters and adding them to the pre-existing piles on the table he gave up. “That’s it,” he announced, plucking two or three envelopes out of the pile. “I’m keeping these, and those, and the rest can go to feed Aberforth’s goats for all I care. Hedwig?”

Hedwig gave him a displeased yellow glare and plucked the first few envelopes off the edge.

“S’only a week’s worth of letters,” Harry mumbled apologetically. “You don’t have to carry them off all at once, y’know.”

Hedwig squawked and clawed at the nearest stack.

Harry shrugged. Then yelped “Oi, wait, not that one!” and grabbed the small folded note from her. “Was this in today’s mail?”

He blinked and unfolded the page torn from a book. “I don’t believe it!” he cried, sprinkling scone crumbs all over the table. He ran a hand through his hair nervously. “The greasy git _answered!_ Again!”

His owl exchanged a knowing look with Fawkes, hooted her opinion of the goings-on, and continued watching her bespectacled, messy-haired human.

After a long pause Harry snorted and looked up from the page depicting the nesting habits of Snowy Owls. “What’d you do to him?” He squinted at Hedwig. “Bloody traitor! I thought you only groomed my hair.”

Hedwig shrieked indignantly and swooped down to snatch up the remaining half of his scone, which had been lying forgotten on top of the envelopes.

“Oh, sorry,” Harry winced. “M’starving you again, aren’t I? I’ll feed you when I finish writing back.”

While he wrote, he noticed Fawkes eyeing Hedwig and the scone interestedly from his perch.

Hedwig settled on the windowsill, puffing out her feathers and giving Fawkes an offended glare as she clutched the loot possessively in her talons.

Fawkes let out an amused trill.

Hedwig flattened her feathers and started pecking at the scone, but not until after she’d turned her back on Fawkes in a pointed ‘I’m ignoring you’ manner.

Fawkes preened.

_Yeah,_ Harry thought, _they’re definitely getting along better than before._

*

 

____spacer____

  
Snape counted the remaining banknotes stashed away between the pages of his father’s Bible and went through a scant handful of sickles and knuts in the pocket of his coat. _Perhaps ordering the Daily Prophet, even without the Evening and Sunday editions, was a bad idea. I really can’t afford the expense._ Even if he only bought the bare necessities, the Muggle money would only last him another few weeks. He briefly considered a trip to Gringotts to exchange the Wizarding coins for Muggle currency, and wondered if his funds would buy him more food in one form than another. But then he’d have to give up his Prophet deliveries. The morning’s newspaper – as well as the irritating company of the bird that brought it – was his only constant link to the Wizarding world. Besides the money spent on replacing the Potions ingredients, the Wizarding newspaper was the only luxury he’d allowed himself.

He shoved the coins back into the pocket of his coat, away from temptation. _Hedwig will just have to get used to her daily trips. Even if Potter eventually grows tired of corresponding or runs out of books to rip apart page by page, I’m damned if I’m giving up my newspaper!_

*

  
Harry took the detour again today. It involved taking three additional staircases and two more minutes of walking through the halls, but that way he didn’t walk past any of Ginny’s classes. _It’s not that I don’t **want** to see her,_ Harry thought. _Honestly, I do. But she’s still cross with me ‘cause I took Ron along when I left Hogwarts and I almost got him killed horcrux-hunting but I left her behind so she wouldn’t be hurt and I just can’t see why she’s angry ‘cause it seemed perfectly logical to me and it’s just best for everyone if she isn’t reminded of that by any ordinary thing – like seeing me again – and doesn’t send another howler during dinner ‘cause sound carries something fierce in the Great Hall and her howlers are just as bad as Mrs. Weasley’s._

Besides, Harry sighed inwardly, _she’s still a student and I’m sort of working here now, helping Headmistress McGonagall and all. And I’m pretty sure that my **not** steering clear of Ginny, or any other student, would be bloody hard to explain away. And then there’s that whole Felix Felicis thing and her breaking up with Dean ‘cause of that and Ron’ll murder me when he hears from Ginny and all I ever wanted was to keep everyone happy!_

*

 

> _ **It means she likes you. Deal with it yourself. ** _
> 
> What **Sleekeasy’s Hair Potion** will do for your hair  
> …The sleek, easy way…  
> …Quick as shaving… 

 

  
Snape eyed the most recent note Hedw... _Bubbles_ dropped on his head. _Cheek!_ He would have loved nothing more than to respond with a suitably scorching reply, but instead the price listed in fine print below the ad caught his eye.

_The bloody nerve!_ Snape thought. _They’re charging twenty times the cost of ingredients! Apparently there are vain idiots out there willing to pay more for a single bottle of this swill than all the money I spent on my last trip to Knockturn Alley. And for what? Something that hardly requires brewing at all: I could brew better than this commercial muck in half an hour with my eyes closed and my wand hand tied behind my back! Is the entire Wizarding world really that thick?_

Snape gave a cynical “Hah!” _After my experiences teaching,_ he smirked inwardly, _why did I even bother to ask myself that question?_

“Listen to me,” Snape turned to the owl, with an inspired gleam in his eye.

Hedwig blinked slowly in a ‘Yes, and?’ manner.

“I intend to brew Potions, preferably plenty of them, preferably expensive, and I’ve chosen _you_ to deliver them,” he announced.

Hedwig squawked indignantly.

“What?” Snape smirked. “It’s not as if you have anything better to do with your time.”

When he turned around again, the bird was gone. “Bloody typical. Like master, like pet,” he muttered under his breath as he glared at Potter’s note. “They’ll do anything to avoid actual work.”

But the inspired expression did not leave his face. He dug through the kitchen drawers and found a pencil and a stack of lined paper so yellowed that his father had probably once used it for his homework. With a pocket knife that was rusted enough not to have been used since then, he sharpened the tip of the pencil until its point punctured the paper. Then he started filling in one page after another with narrow columns of his angular script. There were a great many things to consider if he were to implement the idea in practice.

*

  
Headmistress McGonagall never moved into the tower office beyond the spiral staircase: maybe she wanted to keep her own familiar rooms or perhaps she felt awkward in a place where everything reminded her of Dumbledore. Harry still thought of this place as Dumbledore’s office. It still had Dumbledore’s sherbet lemons in a small bumblebee dish on the corner of the desk and Dumbledore’s pensieve locked in the mirrored cabinet. Harry first saw Fawkes in that room, when nobody had expected the phoenix to come back at all. But Fawkes had returned, and Harry took care of him now.

He liked it here. It was quiet, except for the even snores from the wall where the portrait of Headmaster Dippet hung. It was familiar, down to the tiny chuffs and whirrs of the magical gadgets and the clutter in the desk drawers. He supposed that in time he’d come to think of this place as his. He and Dobby were the only ones who came here often enough to take care of it.

He owed a lot to this place. This was where he first saw the contents of Dumbledore’s pensieve, and first wondered if maybe the man he’d condemned as a traitor and a murderer might not be quite as guilty as he’d thought. This was where he first read through all the narrow cramped writing in Snape’s textbook and realised what it meant.

Harry spent a lot of time in here lately: either looking through the books lining the shelves, or taking another trip into Dumbledore’s pensieve, over and over. Not because he was worried there were some details he might’ve missed, he’d watched these memories too many times for that; but, he supposed, because Dumbledore told him once that it allowed people to view their memories – events and people – in a different light. And somehow Harry came to ... respect the Snape he saw in Dumbledore’s pensieve slightly more than his own memories of the man.

From day to day he came here to get away from the busy Hogwarts life and take a nap in peace. Sometimes he came here to read: Dumbledore’s eclectic book collection, or a newspaper he’d nick from McGonagall’s office for the sports pages, after he was done with the odd jobs she’d asked him to finish.

He had a paper with him now: the Evening Prophet. He leaned sideways in the soft chair behind the Headmaster’s desk and draped his legs over one of the armrests. He chewed on the end of a quill and started filling out a crossword puzzle. He didn’t get far.

After a while he stretched lazily and glanced up at the portrait of a Headmistress who by her clothing dated from the seventeenth century or thereabouts. “What’s a five letter word for a beau?” The Headmistress glared at him sternly, as if saying ‘Are you even supposed to be in here, young man?’ “Oh, forget it,” Harry sighed.

The advertisements flashed and moved on the page: pointing arrows and spinning stars and pulsating dingbats. There was the ‘Q’ in Quality Quidditch Supplies with its wings fluttering like a snitch, and the letters in a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes ad were bouncing on the page. They were quite distracting. Harry couldn’t really think with them moving like that.

Ron was studying to be an Auror. Hermione was working for the Ministry. They were all so busy. Come to think of it, the only letters he’d received lately that had been addressed to _him_ (as opposed to The-Figurehead-Who-Lived) had all come from his former-Professor-turned-fugitive. The only ones he talked to regularly nowadays were Hedwig and Fawkes. What did that say about his life? He had no idea what he was going to do with it for one thing.

On the crossword, where it asked for Divine Protector (7 letters, Across) and Cold-Blooded Predator (5 letters, Down) he discovered that he’d put down ‘Severus Snape’ without even thinking about it. He was quite sure that it wasn’t the right answer, but at least it was something.

> CROSSWORD: 
> 
> _Across:_
> 
> 1\. Illicit   
> 6\. Severus   
> 7\. Pen   
> 8\. Met   
> 9\. Aurors   
> 11\. My   
> 12\. Energy   
> 15\. Professor   
> 17\. Why   
> 18\. Lose   
> 19\. You
> 
> _Down:_
> 
> 2\. Lover   
> 3\. Clues   
> 4\. Reply   
> 5\. Enemy   
> 6\. Snape   
> 10\. Regrets   
> 11\. Memory   
> 13\. Nor   
> 14\. Know   
> 15\. Pry   
> 16\. Owl
> 
> **Quality Quidditch Supplies**: The Very Best Wood 
> 
> **Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes** BOUNCING BUBBLE GUM. It’s a BLAST! 
> 
> Bespoke Brewer   
> Commissioned Concoctions   
> Discreet Dealings   
> _I. Principe_
> 
>  

* * *

Snape’s Standard Book of British Birds is inspired by Monty Python's [Bookshop Sketch](http://www.mzonline.com/bin/view/Python/BookshopSketch).

The Sleekeazy’s ad is a reused vintage advertisement scan for Mulsified Cocoanut Oil Shampoo.

* * *

  



	4. Expecto Patronum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Forbidden Forest — 27th October, 1998

Trees rose into existence around Snape as the familiar, crushing serpent of Apparation disgorged him near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He paused, wand out, the chill of a recently-cast Disillusionment Charm prickling the back of his neck as he scanned his immediate surroundings, searching for foes with the instinctive paranoia that had kept him alive.

Nothing.

Snape released held breath in a sigh, then began to pick his way through the forest, stepping over fallen twigs and crisp, shrivelled leaves. He bypassed the footpath leading to Hagrid’s hut. He noticed it had been rebuilt since the night he left Hogwarts, for what he’d been sure then would be the very last time. Even now, he still shied away from thinking about that night, wondering instead _Does Hagrid still keep that hippogriff on the grounds? The bloody thing’s a menace; I knew I should’ve listened to Draco..._ With a pang he choked off that train of thought too before it choked him in turn.

Instead he concentrated on keeping his footfalls as silent as possible, threading his trackless route through the trees, making for the distant meadow on the lakeshore. The trees had shed their Gryffindor colours onto the ground; the earthy scent of rotting leaves filled the air. Every freezing gust of wind sent them skittering and rattling against the tree roots and his boots alike. The penetrating chill reminded him that winter was near. He pulled up the collar of his threadbare Muggle coat and kept on walking.

He’d been putting this trip off, justifiably cautious about what would happen to him if he crossed the school’s wards. But Potter’s lenience had recently stripped him of that comforting little excuse. At last he’d mustered enough... _courage? self-hatred?_ ...to pay his respects at Dumbledore’s tomb; yet now that he was almost there he was tempted to turn back. _What the hell will I say? Any accusations would be useless; any apologies, insincere. Perhaps it’ll be enough if it’s simply an end, of sorts, to a long line of vows, breakable and Un-. Who knows,_ Snape smirked, _I might even manage to convince myself that my debt to the Headmaster and to the rest of the world has at last been paid in full. What price freedom? One Killing Curse, one damaged soul. Dumbledore certainly knew how to drive a hard bargain._

Out of nowhere, a flicker of white came skimming through the treetops. Snape blinked, startled, as the familiar snowy owl made straight for him and landed on his shoulder with a rustle of wings and a talon-tipped thump. _So much for my Disillusionment Charm! Damn all owls and their too-sensitive-by-half eyes!_ Snape rapped himself crossly on the head with his wand. The warmth of the countercharm eased the chill briefly from his bones, but Snape took no pleasure from that: without the Charm he felt entirely too exposed for comfort. He scowled at Hedwig as soon as he was fully visible; she retaliated by fluffing out her feathers and settling down on his shoulder in a smugly domestic manner. He hmphed and resumed walking, choosing his path with even more care, since now he had to stay unseen as well as unheard. _Where the pet is, the master won’t be far behind._

Soon Snape was able to travel more easily, the undergrowth thinning as he arrived at the edge of the Forest. He squinted at the brighter light between the trees, and sure enough, sitting on the grass beyond the forest was Potter, a dark blot against the pristine whiteness of the tomb. He was leaning back against the marble as if against an ordinary Hogwarts wall. The phoenix was a splash of vivid colour on the boy’s shoulder.

_No, not a boy,_ Snape thought as he looked on that downcast face in person for the first time in more than a year. Harry looked much older than Snape remembered: worn and weary. _I shouldn’t be so surprised. War does that to people._ As Potter sat, absorbed in his own thoughts, Snape noted the easy way Fawkes used Potter for a perch just as the bird used to do with Dumbledore.

Snape took refuge from the implications of that thought, by turning his head to meet Hedwig’s yellow stare. “Is this why you’ve been stalking me these past few weeks?” he teased, “Did Potter replace you?”

Hedwig screeched.

“Hush!” he hissed at her, before muttering by way of grudging consolation, “Don’t worry, he won’t get rid of you. I can hardly see Fawkes delivering mail.”

At the clearing Potter sighed, at the very verge of hearing, “...Anyway, I’m just. I’m not sure what to think about him yet.”

Snape crept closer, keeping always to the shadows, his footsteps silent despite the dry drifts of fallen leaves. Finally he hid behind a line of bushes beyond the last trees, their foliage as orange as a head of Weasley hair. The shift in his posture as he crouched disturbed Hedwig and she flew up to sulk in a nearby tree.

“I swear, sir, I dunno how you managed it all: all the letters from parents, the school board meetings, the daft Ministry regulations, the class schedules, the gripes and the snags and the stuff-ups.” Harry shook his head; when he spoke again, his voice was so soft that Snape could barely hear him. “I miss you. Still. Don’t reckon I’ve ever stopped. Doubt I ever will.” One hand lifted, shoved the scruffy hair off his face in a frazzled gesture; it fell back at once as he continued. “And it’s not just me either. Y’know, without you Hogwarts is a bloody mess. We still don’t have an actual Headmaster: no matter what anyone says to her, Professor McGonagall won’t take the job permanently. She keeps on saying she’s only filling in till we find someone suitable. But there isn’t anyone else!”

He let his head fall back against the tomb and kept talking with his eyes closed. “I’ve been doing what I can to help her, since before the start of term. I’ve got nowhere else to go, really, and they needed an extra pair of hands. Someone had to take care of Fawkes; yeah, and take care of the Professors too: they squabble like firsties every time the staff room runs out of tea, if I’m not there to replace it.” Potter chuckled dryly. “I got the class schedules sorted finally, and the admission letters took ages to deliver. A couple of Muggle families took the news about as well as the Dursleys did, so I had to make dozens of copies, and we had barely enough owls.”

He took his glasses off and looked blurrily around. Snape was fairly sure Potter hadn’t noticed him, so he stayed where he was. Potter’s one-sided conversation intrigued him; it was the first update on Hogwarts’ goings-on that he’d had for months. He kept listening, hidden behind the wall of orange underbrush.

“I spoke at the Feast this year. Sort of messed up my lines, but at least the students stopped staring at me like I had two heads and actually laughed. Er, and I’ve supervised a lot of detentions recently. Didn’t really have anything to do in the evenings,” he shrugged, “and the rest of the Professors were glad to have a break.”

Snape’s mouth curled at the idea of Potter supervising anything. It was truly laughable; yet on the bright side at least Potter still had to endure detentions. _Serve him right. The brat got away with breaking the rules far too often when he was a student._

Potter continued, his soft tone growing louder and more urgent by the second. “We still don’t have anyone to teach Defence. I asked Remus but he said the parents’d still go mental ‘cause he’s a werewolf, and that’s so bloody unfair! But he wouldn’t do it and we’ve got nobody else to do it, so we’re splitting the classes among all the Professors and Trelawney’s utter pants at teaching Defence! And if that’s not bad enough, it’s almost time to renew the wards, and nobody’s got a clue how to do it, ‘cause you never had time to teach McGonagall the Headmaster’s part of the spells. We’ve ransacked the library and searched all over your rooms and everywhere else in the castle, and I’ve been all through your pensieve, and if you left notes on the wards we can’t find them, only you’d hardly leave notes on something that secret anyway, so soon the school’ll be completely bloody defenseless and it’s been like this for weeks, one thing after the other and I really, REALLY don’t know how to FIX ANYTHING!” he yelled out pressing his fists against his forehead and then everything was silent.

When Harry spoke again it was in a quiet, strained voice. “No matter what I do or say, your portrait won’t wake up. I’ve looked in every corridor hoping to see your ghost, but none of us ever have. All I want is to know that, wherever you are now, you’re listening and maybe watching us, sometimes. I... I need to know that I’m getting something, just one thing, right.” He fell silent, listening intently, staring at the tomb, and for a long, long time the silence stretched, until at last he heaved a deep sigh, his shoulders drooping. “Oh, this is mental! If you could see us trying to run Hogwarts now you’d probably either cringe or laugh for hours.” Harry looked small and lost, as if he’d waited here faithfully for weeks if not months, and only now he finally realised that no help would ever answer his call.

Snape frowned. _This isn’t right. People like Harry need to **believe**; it’s the only thing that keeps the stubborn fools going._ Snape felt obliged to do something to convince him that his vigil wasn’t futile after all. It was either that or abandon his concealment, give Potter a good firm shake and yell at him to stop thinking a miracle would fix his problems and do something about them himself. And so Snape took resolve and wand firmly in hand, and searched for a happy memory. The image that came to him was unexpected: a page of a Potions book, Thanks. scrawled in the margin, and the sudden, sharp joy of realising that _someone_ appreciated him. Someone _knew_.

_“Expecto Patronum!”_ Mist rose from the tip of Snape’s wand and exploded into a brilliant silhouette of a bird in flight, its burning wings unfurling in silence above him. This time, the message he gave it to carry was a simple one: _Tsk, tsk. Giving up already?_ he thought to it. The bird soared toward Harry, circling widely over the tomb. Snape didn’t even notice he was holding his breath as he watched.

It was Fawkes who noticed the patronus first, squeaking his surprise at his transparent counterpart. When Harry raised his head and noticed the ghostly phoenix, he sprang to his feet, as energised as if the dejection of mere moments before had never been. His face shone as he watched the patronus gliding in circles closer and closer to him, before it finally settled on top of the tomb. Potter beamed, unselfconscious as a child, as he stretched out both arms toward it.

Snape slid his wand back into his sleeve, smiling at the feeling that his task here was done. With Harry at the tomb, Snape wouldn’t have a chance for his own private communion with the Headmaster; but performing this one small favour had left him with the same sense of closure - of sins atoned for and debts paid - that he’d hoped for when he made his own pilgrimage here. He took one last look at Harry, basking in the patronus’ glow, and was turning away to leave when a hesitant call of “Snape?” stopped him cold.

_No point in hiding any longer._ “Potter.” As Snape stood, impassive as a man facing a firing squad, the patronus soared into the air with a cry and burst into flames. As he walked toward Harry, translucent ashes fell like snow around them both: shining specks that disappeared before they touched the ground.

Potter smiled at him with the same wide-eyed look of joyous surprise he’d previously given the patronus. “Thank you!” he said. “Er... again.”

_First the notes and now this?_ It was true that Potter had been acting unlike himself ever since he sent the first note, but Snape had certainly never expected this sort of greeting. He arched an eyebrow. “Whatever for?”

Potter glanced at the patch of sky whence Snape’s patronus had just disappeared. “That. It was Dumbledore’s, wasn’t it?”

_It really doesn’t take much to convince him that all is right with the world once more._ Snape barely stopped himself from speaking the thought aloud. He settled for a restrained nod.

“S’brilliant,” Potter grinned. “A legend by now. Half the Order still thinks Dumbledore’s been helping us from beyond the grave and the rest just reckon it’s a miracle. And instead it was you all along, telling us how to beat them. I told them it was you! But they never believed me.”

Ah, that was the one thing Snape really wanted to confirm. “In that case, am I to assume that I am still hunted by the Ministry?”

“No! I mean, course not!” Potter shook his head and stepped closer. “Took me a while to convince them, but Dumbledore’s pensieve had enough proof to keep them off your case.”

_He’s about my height,_ Snape realised with surprise. _Last time I saw him, I could still stare him down, but now he’s finally grown up._

“I suggested your name when they were drawing up the Honours List, but they just laughed at me.”

_For all his faults, Potter seems to be the only one in the Wizarding world who might not dance on my grave. Perhaps I can turn this encounter to my advantage after all._ “I have a proposition for you.”

“What sort?” Harry’s eyes were wide with curiosity rather than apprehension; Snape found this rare reaction surprisingly gratifying.

“I’ll teach you the Headmaster’s role in renewing the school’s wards.”

“You _what?_ You heard me talking just now?”

“Yes.”

“Uhm. How much did you...”

_He always did have a habit of asking stupid questions._ Snape merely arched an eyebrow and continued. “I need _you_ to present the solution to McGonagall and the other professors...”

“Oh, that’s a deal.” Harry nodded, “But how long were you listening to me?”

“...since they’ll never agree if they know I’m involved... _What?_ That’s it? That’s a yes?” He stared at Potter, disbelieving, searching his words for a double meaning and his expression for signs of an ulterior motive. There were none.

“Uh-huh,” the whelp nodded. “You’re good at Defence, so you’d probably be brilliant at this. I’ll do it.”

_Impossible fool, no caution whatsoever. Someday, someone is going to take advantage of that. _ “Think twice. I haven’t specified yet what I want from you in return,” Snape drawled, letting his expression communicate a range of terrible possibilities to Potter’s too-trusting mind.

“Oh,” Potter’s eyes widened as the implication sunk in. “What?”

Snape toyed with the idea of being the bastard Potter probably expected him to be, and asking for something completely intolerable in return, just to teach Potter a lesson: Potter’s Order of Merlin, an Unbreakable Vow, sexual favours... It would almost be worth it, just to see the look on Potter’s face. Instead, he said levelly, “I need my Potions ingredients.”

Potter’s eyes went as wide as his owl’s, in a transparent ‘That’s all?’ expression. “From, er, Hogwarts?” he managed.

“Yes. I purchased most of them personally.” _Not that I could produce the receipts anymore,_ Snape thought, with an ironic smirk.

“I ... I can let you back into the stores, just take what you need. S’not like we’re using much of them at the moment.”

_Naïve fool._ Snape knew he’d never make it out of the castle intact, not even with Harry Potter at his side. “Thank you, no. I’d rather not be seen. I’ll owl you a list.”

“Er.” Potter gave him a sheepish look. “I’ll try, but I probably wouldn’t know where to find everything.”

“I know.” Snape mentally resigned himself to regaining only the least explosive ingredients. Just the thought of Harry reaching up for the canister of erumpent fluid on the highest shelf made Snape wince. “Trust me,” he sighed, “if there were any other way, I’d certainly take it. Good day.”

*

  
Snape was making his way back past the wards to Disapparate when he found that Potter was still trailing after him. “Can I ask you something?” Potter called out.

_What does he want now?_ Snape arched his eyebrow as he paused to let Potter catch up. “I should hope you would be capable. Whether I choose to answer is another matter entirely.”

“Have you ever thought about coming back to teach?”

_All the tact - or lack thereof - of the Headmaster._ Snape recalled Potter’s earlier soliloquy on staffing woes and shook his head. “Certainly not.”

“Oh, well,” Potter sighed. “Only, we don’t have a Defence Professor, and I thought...” Potter trailed off, looking down at his toe as it dug circles in the ground. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Would you like to stay for dinner? At the Great Hall, I mean. You can have your old seat at the High Table.”

Snape smirked at the impossible offer, which ironically seemed quite sincerely meant. “I wouldn’t want to terrify your students,” he answered. “And it might be best that the others didn’t see me for a while.” _They might decide to take up barbecuing wizards for a hobby, and I’ve no wish to encourage them._ “I should be getting back.”

“Oh,” Potter blinked. “Right. Walk you to the gates?”

Snape nodded and turned up the fraying collar of his coat. The Muggle clothes did a poor job of protecting him from the evening wind, but ever since he’d gone on the run, they were the only clothes he’d had.

“D’you mind...” Potter began. “Can I - er, may I - ask you something again?” He bit his lip and paused.

“Yes?”

“D’you mind if I write to you?” Potter mumbled all at once.

“You already _are_ writing to me.”

“Yeah, but,” Potter shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t mind my sending random things, about the school or your Potions notes. I’m not expecting you to answer every time; you can burn them or throw them away or tell Hedwig to bring them all back.”

There was a downy phoenix feather stuck in Harry’s fringe above his ear. Snape had nearly reached to remove it but luckily stopped himself in time. _Bubbles’_ obsession with grooming had already become a bad influence on him. “That will be fine,” he said tersely and resumed walking. There was another puff of red down snagged on a low branch in the short evergreen tree nearby. He let Potter walk on ahead a little, before he reached swiftly down and plucked it off along with a spiky-edged holly leaf. He slipped both into his pocket.

____spacer____

  
They were past the wide gates and he was about to Disapparate when Potter’s outstretched hand and cry of “Wait!” stopped him.

“Here,” Potter took something out of the pocket of his robe and held it out. A pack of owl treats. “For Hedwig,” he explained. “S’only fair.” He glanced up suddenly, over Snape’s shoulder, and cried “Oi, Hedwig! Stop it!”

_Speak of the devil._ Snape glared at the greedy pest as she appeared out of nowhere as soon as she saw the treats. He took the bag, shielding Potter from an enthusiastic attack now directed at himself. He glared at the bird. _I dare you._

There was a flap of strong wings next to his head and the grip of taloned feet on his shoulder. Hedwig returned his stare with the scowling determination of someone who isn’t about to take off again for a good long while.

“Gluttonous creature,” Snape grumbled.

Hedwig shook out her feathers as pointedly as a charwoman shaking out her mop, and sidled closer up his shoulder, until her feathery side was brushing his ear.

Potter just grinned. “She likes you.”

Oh yes, and Snape well remembered Potter’s recent advice on what he should do about it. Even the threat of _Incendio_ couldn’t stop that impossible ad from winking suggestively at him and giving him a grin reminiscent of Gilderoy Lockhart. Snape finally used the ad as a motivational aid, of sorts: he stuck it to the wall where he could see it as he worked. Across the bottom, near the outrageous price list that had been the inspiration for his new business, he’d written: If I can’t brew better than this, I should use my cauldrons for soup!

The nibbling at Snape’s hair broke his reverie. He whipped his head round till the owl and he were beak-to-beak, though he suspected that going slightly crosseyed took most of the force from his Glare. “For the last time, I do _not_ wish to go bald! Just for that, I shall call you Bubbles until you stop it!”

Potter looked up and snorted. “Bubbles?”

Snape arched an eyebrow at him and squared his shoulders. “I gave her a new name.” he declared loftily, “I’ll have you know, it’s far more suitable than the one you gave her.” It was getting harder to glare down his nose at Potter when their noses were on the same level.

With a soft sound resembling the gurgle of a bubbling-up cauldron, the insubordinate bird reached out to tweak... _That’s quite enough!_ Snape gave the owl a scowl.

“But why...” It took Potter two tries to finish the question amid spluttered laughter. “Why Bubbles?”

“She is white,” Snape pointed out with as much dignity as he could muster.

“And?” Potter prompted, “Soft? Fluffy?”

Snape curled his mouth into a smirk. “Air-headed.”

Hedwig squawked and nipped his ear so hard that Snape jumped with a squawk of his own, gracelessly tipping her off his shoulder. “Bloody flying mousetrap!” he cried, feeling his ear to see if she’d taken a piece out of it. He’d calculated the risk of escaping the school grounds cursed or wounded, but this was preposterous! He grumbled at Potter, “When are you going to teach that bird manners?”

“Well, you did sort of deserve that,” the imp grinned at him in between chuckles. It was just Snape’s luck that Potter had the manners of his owl; he imagined their brain size was also similar. Shameless, disrespectful, and air-headed. At least Potter didn’t have a fascination with Snape’s hair.

Potter dug through his pockets once more, and this time offered Snape a folded sheet of paper. “Anyway, now that Her Hungriness is out of the way, this one’s for you.”

“Another letter?” Snape accepted the paper from Potter.

“Yeah,” Potter nodded, running his free hand through his messy hair. “Oi, wait! Don’t read it now!”

“I won’t.” Snape slipped it in his pocket, next to the holly leaf and the feather. Fawkes gave a quiet whistle, and Hedwig ‘oo’ed softly in reply. The first droplets of rain fell, spattering Snape’s face with coolness, beading on Potter’s glasses.

Snape raised his wand and murmured “_Apparate_,” before he could convince himself to accept Potter’s crazy offer of dinner in the Great Hall.

*

  
His house was dark and empty, and so were the kitchen cupboards. He peered at all the shelves nonetheless, frowning at them as if they could be browbeaten into clothing their bare wood with groceries. But for all his searching and scowling, all he found was some elderly cheese, which (along with the ends of last week’s loaf) would just have to do for lunch. As he chewed persistently at one dry mouthful after another, he found it more and more difficult not to torment himself by dwelling on memories of Hogwarts’ sumptuous feasts. To distract himself from such thoughts he took another determined bite and began rummaging through the drawers. At last he found what he wanted: an old bound notebook, its spine thick and cracked, its pages loose and ragged-edged, crinkled with all the dried up bits and pieces that had been crammed between them. His boyhood potions journal.

He nearly caught his nail on the shining strand of unicorn hair he’d collected in the Forbidden Forest during his first year at Hogwarts. As he turned the pages back, he felt as though he was travelling back with them, back to his earlier self, past the dried, crisp wormwood and the pressed foxglove blossoms, and three pages of speculations on the magical properties of _Musca domestica_ (including its seldom-noticed resistance to the effects of curses). Every page had to be turned with caution, for the sake of the samples preserved carefully between the sheets, some of them fragile, some still dangerous despite the decades that had passed. More pages turned with occasional crackles and wafts of strange scents, until he arrived at his notes on the properties of wand woods and cores. At last his hands stilled, and he stroked the opened pages as tenderly as if they were an upturned face.

____spacer____

  
He never had managed to find samples for these particular pages, and he smiled slightly at the clumsy sketch with which he’d attempted to fill the deficiency in his childhood notes on holly. What better place than this for his most recent finds? He murmured a careful preservation charm along with the sticking spell, and the feather flattened itself against the page as if magnetised, until such time as he’d need it again.

____spacer____

 

____spacer____

  
Afterwards, he brought the leaf to his eyes and stared at it, twirling it between his thumb and index finger by the stem. The glossy green brought an image to his mind all too easily. It was not often that he allowed himself to be reminded of the fact that Harry Potter was Lily Evans’ son as well James’, living his life through his mother’s sacrifice, looking at the world through her eyes. He chased that thought far away as he slipped the leaf between the pages and eased the journal carefully closed.

He wished he’d collected more phoenix feathers at the clearing. They were too valuable an ingredient to waste.

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF THE IMAGES

1.

_My theory why Ollivander uses only cores of Phoenix, Dragon and Unicorn tissue in his wands: These three magical creatures symbolise all possible pairs of the Four Elements. The Phoenix, symbol of Fire, disdains its opposite, Water, and unites Fire and Air (flight) and Fire and Earth (burnt to ash). The Dragon, symbol of Water, unites Fire and Water (breath fumes) and Water and Earth (slimy body). The Unicorn, symbol of Air, unifies Air and Earth (leaps) and Air and Water (purifying springs with its horn). But how does wood and core interact in a wand? Is a wand’s core like a wizard’s inner nature and its wood like the environment in which he lives? Just as both internal and external forces shape character, so might wood and core influence the wand’s field of magical specialty. What is my magical specialty? I wonder what type of wand will choose me?_

2.

_WAND WOODS:  
HOLLY  
Latin: Ilex aquifolium  
Old English: Tinne  
Gaeilge: Cuileann  
Wood is white, heavy, with a fine, even, close grain.  
Symbolises: * Rebirth (The Green Man’s crown at Yule)  
* Protection Against Evil (Would a holly wand be poorly suited for curses? Or unable to be used by a Dark Wizard?)  
* Habitat of Fairies.  
* Protection against Lightning strikes.  
One of the Nine Sacred Woods used in Need-Fires (Oak, Pine, Holly, Hazel, Juniper, Cedar, Poplar, Apple &amp; Ash)  
Berries are poisonous to humans, though used as an emetic.  
Birds find the berries tasty, though the twigs yield birdlime._

3.

_WAND CORES:  
PHOENIX FEATHER  
Greek: Φοίνικας  
No-one knows why Ollivander refuses to make wands with other cores. It must be possible, or else Grigorevich would be unable to make wands cored with hairs from Veela and other Magical Creatures. The Phoenix is the Element of Fire, just as the Dragon is the Element of Water, the Unicorn is the Element of Air, and the Wood of the Wand is the Element of Earth, the Mother and foundation of us all.  
Symbolises: * Rebirth (like Holly: good pairing in a wand?)  
* Protection from Darkness (Sunrise symbol, also Hope)  
Bears heavy burdens, reads character, responds to loyalty._


	5. The Letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's End — 27th October, 1998

Snape was true to his word. He didn’t touch Potter’s letter until well after he’d returned home.

Just as he drew the envelope from his coat pocket, a flash of white wing feathers in the window startled him into dropping it discreetly on the table. Apparation took just a wink of an eye, but even that was not fast enough to escape from an owl on a mission, and with a taste for the owl treats Potter had foisted upon him.

“Bubbles,” he growled with the same careful menace he usually used on the name of her owner.

The owl swooped in the window before he could shut it, and landed on the back of a chair. She tilted her head and regarded him with wide, innocent eyes. “Whoo?” she crooned, but when he managed to maintain his stern look despite this blatant attempt at manipulation, she deflated like leftover bubbles in the bottom of the bath.

Snape hmphed, refusing to feel guilty; he decided to pay the obnoxious bird no mind. He reached for Potter’s envelope on the table, but Hedwig watched him with all the fascination of an owl intent on reporting his every move back to her master. _Bloody stickybeak! How many bribes will I have to give her before I’m left in peace? Did Potter send her to spy on my reactions as I read? Not if I can help it!_

He left Harry’s letter where it was, and with an exasperated sigh pulled the bag of treats out of his pocket. He sniffed at the contents – _Gopher? I could come up with a more ‘greasy grimy’ recipe than this in my sleep!_ – grimaced, and tossed a single treat her way. _Still, it’s probably just as well. Blasted bird’s big enough already; if I improve on her health she’ll be robbing half of Wizarding Britain’s post-owls, not just mine._

Hedwig snapped the treat out of midair and gulped it down so fast it hardly even touched the sides. She clicked her beak at him and sidled closer, eyeing him up and down as if wondering just how ‘greasy grimy’ his own skin would be. _Bloody feathered rubbish bin! How much does it take to fill you up?_ In the end Snape had to part with two more treats and several more threats, before he managed to shoo her out. As she took off, flapping extra-hard to get that full crop airborne, he closed the window after her with a satisfying ‘and stay out!’ slam.

_Alone at last._ He eyed the envelope. _Enough of Potter and his nonsense,_ Snape told himself with a scowl, _I have far more important things to do. Reading mail is just another chore; it can wait. And not as a reward either,_ he reminded himself sternly, _It’s not as though I need to reward myself for brewing._ He swept the envelope briskly off the kitchen table and out of the way.

It was mere happenstance that the only place in the tiny kitchen where it really would be out of the way of his brewing, was on the sill of the closed window, in plain sight.

*

  
Only a short while later he had two cauldrons simmering: one hovered on a _Leviosa_ over a Bluebell Flames charm, the other balanced on a corroded gas ring of the ancient Muggle stove. The sink’s draining board was crowded with glass containers scrounged from neighbourhood rubbish bins: jars and bottles that still needed to be cleaned and capped. He scowled at them and muttered some uncomplimentary comments on the pervasiveness of plastics: these days Muggles even used them for the tops of otherwise-acceptable glass bottles.

_I could be perfecting Wolfsbane, making it into what it should’ve been: a **cure** for lycanthropy, instead of the palliative which that fraud Belby settled for. But nooo, instead I’m brewing_ – he sneered at the appalling irony – _hair care products!_

From the square of newspaper Snape had stuck to the wall, the man in the Sleekeazy’s advertisement gave him a ‘cheer up’ smile and a little wave.

He eyed the ad sourly. “Are you related to Gilderoy Lockhart by any chance?”

The photograph’s eyes widened, then the sudsed head nodded eagerly, splattering printed foam everywhere on the picture. _Well what a surprise **that** isn’t,_ Snape thought in disgust.

He turned his back on the ad, plucked one of his hairs and dipped it into the potion simmering on the stove. When he pulled the hair out, it disintegrated with a nicely-dramatic little puff of smoke. _Tempting,_ he smirked wickedly, _but I’d better put the Hair Remover labels on it after all. I’ve only barely avoided one set of lynch mobs; it’s a bit too soon, even for me, to go looking for another._

The improved version of Sleekeazy, steaming gently in the hovering cauldron, was ready for sale. However, for the hair remover he still required more testers, with different types of hair: preferably still attached to skin. Hair of varying thickness, length, colour, curls. Something other than the hair of the two remaining mice. He glanced at the ad again. _Perhaps if I leave a sample unlabelled: A gift from an Anonymous Admirer to Lockhart. That’ll cover the smarmy self-absorbed sod population, which has to be half the market for vanity potions like these. Which will leave only the gullible idiot half of the market to test. ...Potter?_

Snape chuckled to himself. _Out of the goodness of my heart, I’ll even send him a note warning him of the dangers of trying unknown potions... an hour **after** I send him a sample. If he’s reckless enough to try it at once, he deserves the results._ He imagined being confronted by a glaringly angry, glaringly _bald_ Potter...

_...Perhaps not,_ he conceded. _At least with that owl nest on his head, he looks halfway decent._

*

  
Snape was just pouring the last dregs of the hair remover into an old bloater paste jar when he heard the rush of flames burning suddenly high in the sitting room hearth. And then he heard something else, something that made his whole body, his whole world, go abruptly still.

It was only a simple “Hello?” But that _voice..._ The jar slipped through nerveless fingers and crashed into the sink. _It **can’t** be!_ Time jolted back and all at once Snape was moving, striding into the sitting room, wand out, curses poised on the tip of his tongue.

“Evening, Severus.”

All Snape could do was gape at the vision framed in the sooty fireplace. Bright flames licked Draco Malfoy’s pale face as it smiled proudly up at him from the ashes. “It’s really me, swear on Salazar’s scrote.”

The last two words had become a running joke, a private catchphrase between the two of them; in its uncharacteristic coarseness it was extremely unlikely any third person would think of Draco saying it, much less know to use it as a proof of identity. That left out Polyjuice or glamours. Either this _was_ Draco, or Snape had suddenly gone stark raving mad.

It took supreme effort for Snape to assume his usual cool mask. “Good to see you again, Draco,” he replied in tones whose evenness disclaimed the way his heart was hammering in his throat. “Now that you’re here, perhaps you can explain to me why I had to learn of both your incarceration and your ‘suicidally botched escape attempt’ from the Daily Prophet?”

Draco winced, but the proud smile returned as he quipped, “Would ‘I was busy making an ingenious escape’ do for an explanation?”

“Ingenious?” Snape cried, “INGENIOUS?”

“Hey, it got me out of Azkaban alive: only the second prisoner in history, mind you! I’d say that qualifies for not just ‘ingenious’, but ‘utter brilliance’.”

_Perhaps his usual attitude **is** unusually justified **this** time,_ Snape thought, _but does that make up for my..._ He quashed that thought ruthlessly, lest it lead him to some of the many places in himself he’d rather not explore. Instead, he fell back on a perennial pastime: pruning the ever-blossoming Malfoy ego with the razor edge of his tongue. “In that case, who was it who came up with this ‘ingenious’ plan, and helped you execute it?”

Predictably, Draco pouted; for that moment he looked startlingly like the five-year-old who’d been determined to treat his Godfather Severus like a climbing frame. “Well, Aunt Bella helped, a little,” he muttered.

Snape lifted a sceptical eyebrow.

“All right, _a lot!_”

_Now we’re getting to the truth._ “What did she do?”

“Smuggled in Polyjuice and Doppelgänger Decoction.” Draco smiled warmly at Snape, “I’ve never been more grateful for the time you spent explaining the books you used to read in Father’s library.”

“So you made a Doppelgänger,” Snape mused. It was a difficult process, requiring wandless spellwork as well as the potion, and other measures besides. “Well done.”

Draco beamed at the praise. “For once it was lucky the guards couldn’t be arsed to clean my cell; left me plenty of ...raw materials to work with.” Draco’s nose scrunched in distaste. Snape smirked. The procedure involved sculpting a miniature model of the subject using not only the Dopplegänger Decoction, and the usual hair and nail trimmings, but all the bodily secretions as well. He knew Draco would have hated that.

The escape plan was rather simple, really. Having created an identical duplicate of himself with no will apart from his own, Draco had doubtless used the Polyjuice to mimic one of the guards. Hairs would’ve been easy enough to obtain; from Snape’s own memories of Azkaban, the food invariably contained those, or even worse additives. Then it would’ve been a relatively simple matter of a ‘guard’ being let out of the cell, and of the Doppelgänger following orders to destroy itself in an ‘escape attempt’ that night, before the deception could be detected.

But before he could comment further on the plan, Draco interrupted, speaking with that breathlessness that always entered his voice when he desperately wanted something. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about escaping before, but that’s not really why I called. Sir, you _have_ to come with me, to Bulgaria! That’s where I’m calling from. The Aurors will never find you here! There _are_ no Aurors in Bulgaria, did you know? Durmstrang’s brilliant, everything we wanted Hogwarts to be; their Quidditch pitch is to die for! And Durmstrang needs a Dark Arts Professor! I’ve told them all about you, and they’re really impressed! Said they’d heard great things about you, and...”

Draco’s excited, pleading voice faded from Snape’s awareness: the churning of his own thoughts crowded everything else out.

It was so bloody ironic. A scant few months ago, Snape would have quite literally leapt at such an offer, would have flung himself headlong through the fire at Draco, would have kicked the dust of Britain from his boots forever, without a single glance back.

What had changed so much in his life? What was so different now? Was it just the knowledge that he’d been pardoned? Or was it the fact that the pardon had been championed by none other than The Man Who Lived?

How much did any of that mean, when weighed against a future free of Wizengamot interference? A future with his brightest student. Alone together in a foreign land, they could only become closer...

“Draco,” Snape’s voice was low and taut with suppressed emotion, “Please.” He swallowed before choking the words out past the tightness in his throat, “Don’t contact me again.”

“...of course you’ll have to teach in Bulgarian, but they’ve got grimoires that’ll have you speaking it in a day, and… WHAT?”

Stung by Draco’s bewildered anguish, Snape cried, “Foolish boy! Don’t you understand how _lucky_ you are to be alive? And how carelessly you’re risking your life?”

“_‘Foolish’?_ Hang on, stand aside, I’m flooing in.”

The fire crackled and spat sparks, but Snape didn’t back away. He stood his ground in front of the hearth, shielding it from the kitchen doorway as if Potter’s letter had eyes and ears; using his own body to stop Draco from coming through. “I am _serious!_” he cried. “Change your face and your name, forget the Manor, cut every tie you had to this country and _never_ return!” For the life of him, Snape couldn’t keep a pleading note from his voice. “Whatever else you’ve done, you’ve proven the lie to their boasts that no-one escapes Azkaban alive. If they find out, they’ll never forgive you: they can’t _afford_ to. Even if a miracle happens twenty years from now and your crimes are stricken from the record, if you’re ever in their jurisdiction again, they’ll _kill_ you on sight, and excuse it as an accident after it’s too late.”

“But...” Draco faltered, terribly uncharacteristically; despite the flames his face had gone as pale as a ghost. “But Severus...” he whispered.

“I didn’t do everything I did to keep you alive,” Snape husked, sinking to his knees before the fire, looking at Draco eye to eye, man to man, “only to stand back and let you throw your life away now. _You_ didn’t go through everything you’ve gone through.” He heaved a ragged sigh. “It’s _not_ fair, Draco, it’s not right or just or even reasonable...”

Draco finished the sentence, Godfather Severus’ words familiar to him since he was a child, smarting under a child’s small hurts, “‘...but it’s the way it _is_, and neither of us can change it.’ ...I know. It’s just... I know.” He gave a wan and watery smile, and breathed, “_Thank_ you. For my life. For everything.”

The twist of grief in that familiar face wrenched at Snape, but he kept most of his own pain from his face as he murmured, “You’re welcome. Farewell.”

The hearth had never looked so black as it did when that fire faded away.

*

  
When Snape finally unfolded the letter late that night, by the light of a single candle on his bedside table, the first thing he saw was the court notice announcing his acquittal. The announcement had been buried near the back of the paper, at the very bottom of page 56, under yet another ad for Sleekeazy’s; he smirked defiantly at the irony. The smirk only widened and soured when he saw the sheer blatant bias present in every line of the article. They hadn’t mentioned that Potter had argued in his defence. They’d even listed all the charges against him in uppercase, while the admission that he’d been acquitted was delayed to the very end, and was even in a smaller font. _It’s the little touches like that,_ he sneered, _that make for **quality** yellow journalism._

No wonder he hadn’t seen that obscure notice at the time it’d been published. Back then, he was still on the run, and hadn’t expected to live through the summer. He’d just split up from Draco – one man was far less conspicuous than two travelling together – and had been wondering if Draco would make it to his friends at Durmstrang and finish his education there, as they’d both wanted. The desire to see Draco out of the country and away from the Aurors’ clutches, had been one of the key factors fuelling Snape’s own resolve: to stay in Britain, to decoy the hunters off Draco’s trail, to keep hiding, keep running, keep surviving. He’d wanted to stay alive long enough to know that he’d won that much: that _just one person_ he’d cared for was _safe_.

He knew now.

Above the photo beside the article, Harry had scrawled, Not a move! Lazy sods! and under it, I wanted to watch...

_‘Watch’?_ Snape snorted. _ Watch what, I wonder? If that photo was taken when I think it was – right after I was released from Azkaban – then I think I spat a mouthful of blood at the camera. The guards get so sentimental about their farewell beatings._

  
As well as the court notice there was a tightly rolled parchment that turned out to be his Wanted poster. There was a bit of white beard and a watchful eye on the right. The photo had obviously been cropped in a hurry out of a larger one. Snape had a fair idea which one it was too: he could count on the fingers of one hand the photographs anyone had ever bothered to take of him. This one must have been cropped from Hogwarts’ faculty photograph. He’d been told to stand to the right of the Headmaster, while McGonagall stood to the left of him; they’d looked like a Bishop and a Queen flanking their King. _Dumbledore always was aware of the power of symbolism,_ Snape thought with a pang. He recalled that he and McGonagall had both been unhappy over the most recent Quidditch match, and the resulting points losses on both sides; they’d been throwing dirty looks at each other around Dumbledore, who’d stood smiling blissfully through it all. With the clarity of hindsight, Snape could see now that it was such a trivial thing to get so worked up over. In times without large woes, small ones loom larger. All was still well with the world in that photograph: the threat of the Dark Lord had seemed so far away, and Harry Potter had just started his first year at Hogwarts.

Underneath the picture and right above the writing specifying Snape’s appearance, height, and criminality, that selfsame boy had scribbled: I like this photo better.

_‘Like’?_ Snape scoffed at the writing. _Insolent imp, why should **I** care a damn about **your** aesthetic opinions?_ Yet he glanced at the images again, side by side, examining them more closely, comparing and cataloguing the differences. He couldn’t stop the curiosity of the logician, the researcher – both rare traits in the Wizarding world – from prompting him to wonder: _Why this one and not the other?_ An answer wasn’t readily forthcoming, either; unless there were specific tactical reasons to do so, he rarely gave his own appearance a moment’s thought beyond the dull daily necessities of cleaning and shaving charms.

There was a long note attached as well, longer than anything Harry had written to him before. From the relatively legible handwriting, it was obvious he’d put more care into this than he ever had into his school essays. As always, the attempts to scratch out some words only made Snape focus all the more keenly on deciphering them. The task was ridiculously simple. _The boy really is an open book. No wonder he was such an abysmal student of Occlumency._

_I don’t believe it. He **can** be taught._

A lopsided, uncertain smile had crept onto Snape’s face as he read; it lingered as he set the letter down on his bedside table and blew out the candle.

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF THE IMAGES

1.

1 GALLEON OFF! _It’s Easy to be Beautiful with Sleekeazy!_

Not a move! Lazy sods!

COURT NOTICE - Be it known that  
after the first Assizes of June 1998  
the CRIMINAL CHARGES officially  
filed on fugitive SEVERUS SNAPE  
to wit: TREASON, MEMBERSHIP of a  
TERRORIST CABAL (DEATH EATERS)  
Casting of UNFORGIVEABLE CURSES  
Wanton Practice of the DARK ARTS  
&amp; MURDER MOST FOUL are dismissed

I wanted to watch...

The Daily Prophet 56

2.

**WANTED**

SEVERUS SNAPE

Unforgiveable Curses!  
Murderous Dark Wizard!

I like this photo better

This MURDERER of Albus Dumbledore is a Tall, Thin Young Man, Sallow of Complection, Black of Eye and Hair, Ill-Favoured of Appearance. Extremely Hostile! Do not approach! Contact Aurors or Ministry Officials if he is seen!

3.

Hi, ~~Snape,~~

I’m sure you’re wondering what the bloody hell I’m on about. Well, here it is. I was filling out a crossword the other day, only not really filling it out, just writing random things in the blanks to make them fit. And at the end it had your name up there, along with ~~lov~~ ~~regr~~ some other things. And that’s when I thought of something. Before Dumbledore told me about the horcruxes, and ordered you to kill him, it felt like he was always trying to get me to learn something from you. And I’m thinking, perhaps he wanted us to work together. Maybe even get along together. Thing is, even though I reckon I’ll never understand most of what Dumbledore did, I think I am starting to understand this. We’ll never know for certain now, but here’s the thing. You weren’t the only Professor I got mad at, when I was at school. Don’t snort, it’s true. Anyway. There was this one time, I got so bloody furious with Dumbledore I went completely mental. Smashed pretty much everything in his office. Made a hell of a bloody mess. And he just sat back and didn’t turn a hair or lift a finger to stop me. But you know what? All those years I spent pissed off at you, all those years I thought of you as just Snape – or ~~death~~ ~~eate~~ ~~basta~~ ~~rotten~~ ~~greasy~~ worse. He never once let me get away with calling you just Snape. Every single time I tried it where he could hear me, he’d always give me this look. You know the one, over his glasses. The one where he’s so disappointed in you it makes you feel about two inches tall. Well, he’d give me that look, every time, and he’d say “Professor Snape.” Every single time. And, well, I reckon that meant something. I’d really like to find out what. And I hope I’m not too late. And what I hope most of all, is that you won’t mind helping me, just one more time.

Harry.


	6. Proof Marks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's End — 28th October, 1998

Snape’s photograph was impossible to live with.

When Harry said that Snape deserved the Order of Merlin instead of Azkaban, the Ministry just laughed. So Harry rubbed their noses in Dumbledore’s pensieve until they had to drop the charges. As he left, Harry rescued a copy of Snape’s Wanted poster from their message board, just to spite the bastards. Then he decided to take matters into his own hands, and searched all over Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, collecting every scowling, beaky copy, one by one.

Most of the posters were in a sad state. Many of them had been worn by the sun, wind and rain, and almost all of them had suffered far worse damage from hands or wands: scorch marks, hexes, or graffiti. When Harry mulched Professor Sprout’s young fruit trees to protect their tender roots from the coming frost, he laid the damaged photos to rest beneath the deep drifts of autumn leaves he piled around the trees. A peaceful return to the earth was the best way to heal any lingering taint of the public malice aimed at Snape through his hapless photographs.

In the end, for all Harry’s searching, he found only two copies which had completely escaped the ravages both of the elements and of the wizarding world’s hate. Harry kept them, preserving them with a certain defiant thoroughness and care. He told himself that it was just so a really good photo enchantment wouldn’t go to waste.

He’d sent one to Snape. The other was still on the wall in his room, in between a poster of the Chudley Cannons (Ron still supported them, even if no one else did) and one of the Holyhead Harpies (every bloke on Harry’s Quidditch team definitely liked them!) Every so often a snitch zipped across from one Quidditch poster to the other, almost putting Snape’s candle out, and whenever that happened Snape glared irritably at Harry, even though his real counterpart was actually getting almost civil in his letters. It shouldn’t’ve mattered at all; really, Harry shouldn’t’ve even noticed something so trivial. As it was, the photograph’s attitude bothered Harry enough that one day he cornered Colin Creevey. “Have you got any photos of the Potions classroom?”

“No, but I can always take one. Why?”

Harry shrugged. “I need one. Only without any students in it.” _Let’s see how the greasy bastard reacts then! I reckon anything’d be better for him than being stuck in a group shot at the Great Hall forever and ever. He always looked so unhappy during dinners. Just wait, I’ll wipe that sneer off his face, when I give him a photograph of his precious dungeons to move into._

*

  
When Albus died, Snape’s decades-old double agent mission had shifted abruptly to deep cover. With the ultimate success of the deep cover mission and Riddle’s death, Snape’s goals in life had changed again: crystallising from the quicksand complexity of espionage to the stony simplicity of survival. Now, when Potter’s clemency meant Snape was no longer a wanted man, he wasn’t about to sit back and rest on his noticeably non-existent laurels.

The hard evidence of Potter’s unlikely mercy – the notice of dismissal of all charges against him – was propped up against his Mum’s chipped Brown Betty teapot. The rays of early morning sun slanted in through the small kitchen window, giving the rather tatty scrap of newsprint a gilding more fitting for the Get Out Of Azkaban Free ticket it really was. Completing the scene’s domesticity, Hedwig sat at the other end of the table in a contented puff of feathers, nibbling at the last scrap of bacon rind on her plate. Giving the flying fiend her own plate was a purely practical measure: it was the only way to stop her from trying to steal from his.

_Perhaps_, Snape mused, warming his hands around his morning cuppa as he stared absently at the clipping, _I’m simply not cut out for the quiet life._ Another notice in the Prophet – of Draco’s ‘death’ – had soon enough given Snape a new mission: to put Potter in his rightful place, to show him that he wasn’t worshipped as a saviour by the entire Wizarding world. _Salazar knows, I’ve failed to teach the brat anything else, but I hope he’ll at least learn that, given time._

As he sat, inhaling tea-fragrant steam from the mug in his hands and occasionally taking a warming sip, Snape admitted ruefully to himself that, somewhere along the road to his latest goal in life, things had changed. Too soon he’d begun to wait for the arrival of Potter’s pestiferous pet, too impatiently he’d looked forward to reading Potter’s letters, too often he’d enjoyed smirking at Potter’s halfwitticisms.

Snape’s gaze drifted down from the clipping to yesterday’s letter, laid out on the kitchen table. He’d had enough practice deciphering Potter’s scrawl at Hogwarts that now, in plain daylight, it was no effort for him to read the scratched-out words. Absentmindedly he held out a hand and a quill flew into it. As he sipped, and thought, his hand fell into the routine – so ingrained as to be instinctive – of correcting student essays. Automatically it drew a single bold stroke through “death eate”, “basta”, “rotten”, and “greasy”, and added the proof mark for ‘delete’ in the margin. 1 But as Snape’s gaze fell on the other scratched-out words – the ones that, for once, _weren’t_ insults – he started to wonder.

_‘Love?’ ‘Regret?’_ Snape trailed the feathery end of his quill over his lips: an old habit when deep in thought. _Odd. He crossed them out, so clearly he thought better of having written them. Still, he wasn’t **so** determined for me not to see them that he used a fresh sheet of paper. What the hell should I make of **that**?_

Snape grimaced, sitting back from the table and shaking his head, as if to clear it. _Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. He most likely couldn’t be bothered to grab another piece of paper; he probably just kept scribbling away on the spur of the moment._

More than ever, Snape regretted that he hadn’t subscribed to the Evening Prophet, since it was the evening edition which had the crosswords. He was now quite curious about the words Harry claimed to have filled out. _Wait! Doesn’t the Daily Prophet print the answers to the previous evening's puzzle?_ He sprang up and strode into the sitting room, making straight for the sofa and the neighbouring pile of Daily Prophets: his main link to the wizarding world. He settled down on the threadbare sofa and searched through the hoarded stack. Anyone else would probably have simply skipped over the scratched-out words in Potter’s note, but Snape found solving such little mysteries far more enjoyable than solving any crossword the Prophet had to offer.

The paper had to be recent, and indeed he hadn’t dug far down into the pile before he gave an abrupt crow-caw cry of triumph and folded back a particular page with a flourish of crackling newsprint.

____spacer____

  
_This has to be it! Saviour – S-blank-V-blank-blank-U-blank – or ‘Severus’. Snake – S-N-A-blank-E – or ‘Snape’. Well isn’t that ironic: even if – by some miracle – he actually got every other word right, he could still shoehorn my name into those two spaces._

Snape peered distrustfully at the page, leaning closer, until the pointed tip of his nose almost touched it.

_There’s ‘regrets’ too, right enough. And... not even ‘love’. ‘Lover’._

_Lover. Regrets._

Snape bolted abruptly from the sofa, storming back into the kitchen and snatching up the handwritten note, glaring at it almost hard enough to set it on fire.

Eyebrows drawn together, he held it as carefully as if the ink itself contained poison. Harry’s slightly naïve but honest confession suddenly seemed to crawl with secondary meanings and hidden motives.

So welcome last evening, now Potter’s scribbles looked a lot like betrayal in the light of day. _And here I thought he meant what he wrote..._

_...Or **did** he? No, this has got to be a joke! A **love** letter from Harry Bloody Potter? Ridiculous!_

Snape seized the quill, slapped the note back down on the table and began attacking it as if trying to shred it with the quill’s sharp point. Angry corrections skritch-skritched across the page in ink that turned ominous-old-blood red in response to a brief seep of fury-fuelled wandless magic. As had always been his habit when marking student essays, his corrections included withering little asides, none of which were among the official lexicon of proofreaders’ annotations.

_Love letter, eh?_ Snape seethed, _We’ll just see about that! If he’s cracked enough to start harbouring romantic delusions about **me** of all people, it’s high time he was brought back to reality!_

By the time he’d managed to find something to excoriate on almost every line of the luckless letter, Snape’s burst of temper had finally cooled. He hmphed and set down the quill, massaging life back into the claw-cramped fingers of his writing hand.

_Perhaps I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Maybe he’s just baiting me. Or trying to play a prank on me, like his dear departed Dad. Only one way to know for sure: I’ll have to call his bluff. For once it’ll be lucky that I never managed to drum Occlumency into that thick head of his._

With a peremptory flick of his wand, he _Evanesco_ed the corrections off Harry’s letter, before jotting a couple of words in the margin. He tore off a bit of paper and sent just that scrap back, as a reply, with Hedwig.

*

  
At dinner, Harry took over Snape’s seat at the high table in the Great Hall. He didn’t really have a choice: it was the only one available, besides Dumbledore’s.

He’d just licked his spoon clean after finishing his second helping of treacle tart, when Hedwig landed on his shoulder with a white flurry of feathers (and a shove to his arm that almost sent his spoon down his throat after his dessert).

The Slytherins (whose table was the closest to Harry’s new seat) chuckled at the kerfuffle, but they went quiet right away under McGonagall’s stern glare, which was then turned Harry’s way. “Control that bird of yours, Mister Potter.”

Hedwig poked her head around Harry’s and snapped her beak defiantly.

Harry cringed. “What is it, girl?” he whispered after McGonagall’s attention returned to her cup of tea.

Hedwig stretched out and dropped a small scrap of paper onto his practically-licked-clean dessert plate. She took off with a flap and flew a slow and defiant loop all round the Great Hall, before disappearing with a final hoot through the main doors. Harry didn’t even dare to sneak a glance at the Headmistress; he kept his head bent over his plate as he picked up the paper and unfolded it.

There were only two words on it.

He squinted at them. Then blinked. His eyebrows slowly lost themselves in the mess he had by way of a fringe.

“Is anything wrong?” McGonagall asked, but Harry was already out of his chair and halfway to the door, running after Hedwig faster than post owls flew, a two-word note clutched tight in his fist.

*

  
Harry peered at the note again. Then he turned it sideways, as if expecting the words to change into something completely different. No, they were still there, still in Snape’s angular, unmistakeable handwriting.

____spacer____

Hedwig and Fawkes, who were currently sharing a perch like two army generals might share neutral territory during brief negotiations, both jumped as Harry tripped over the chair in his rush.

“Hedwig! Was that it?! How’d he look? What’d he say? Did he read my letter? Did he send me anything else?”

Hedwig gazed up at him with round, serious eyes. “Whoo?”

“Ohh, what’m I saying?” Harry cried, exasperated with himself, “Course he read it! How else could he’ve replied? Only, I expected something a bit longer. What sort of cryptic sod scribbles down two words? He didn’t say what time! Did he even mean this Saturday? Um, what’s today again? Argh! Why’m I asking you?” He spun around, looking for a calendar on the desk, mumbling to himself until he determined for certain it was Wednesday.

Hedwig goggled mutely at him for a long moment, before exchanging a meaningful look with Fawkes. As one, they turned their backs on Harry, shook out their feathers, and resumed their mutual silent glare-a-minute exchange.

Snape’s photograph seemed highly amused by the whole situation, judging by that positively feline smirk.

*

  
_Two piddling little words! Right, I’ll show him! There! See how **you** like a taste of your own potions, you surly sod!_ Harry scribbled out a reply on a large, blank piece of paper and handed it to Hedwig. As Fawkes let out a gleeful trill, Hedwig squawked, unhappy with the interruption, but grabbed the paper anyway.

“Oi, hang on!” Harry cried as she headed out the window.

Hedwig pivoted on a wingtip and swooped back, giving Harry an exceedingly beaky-and-scowly glower. (Perhaps she was just a little bit better than her human, at learning things from a certain ex-Professor.)

“Sorry, girl, s’important!” Harry muttered, feeling a bit hot about the face as he took the paper back and unrolled it, “Forgot something.” He added a few more words in a tiny little sheepish scrawl at the bottom of the sheet, tacked on after the two-inch letters that were already there.

____spacer____

  
“Hmm, where _does_ he want me to meet him? Would he want to come here, when he’s been here all this time, or would he want to be the host: only his place is pretty tiny and a bit grubby by all accounts. Not that it matters!” He raised his hands to his head, almost knocking off his glasses. “Oh, bloody hell, I’m being an arrogant prat already, just like he always said Dad was, and God I’m going to make a complete bloody BERK of myself I JUST KNOW IT!”

*

  
“Good Godric, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall snapped on Thursday afternoon, “What’s got into you today? It’s not even dinnertime yet, and I’m already getting the urge to swat you like a cat with a rogue snitch! Kindly stop bouncing about and do return my Daily Prophet; I wasn’t finished reading it!”

Harry jumped down to his seat and tried his best to look busy. “Yes Ma’am.”

*

  
Friday wasn’t any better.

“She kicked me out of her office!” Harry waved his arms emphatically, “Idon’tbelieveit! Told me not to show my face in public till I’m over whatever’s wrong with me. What’re _you_ smirking at?”

The Snape in the poster pointed upwards at the words printed above the photograph, and mouthed ‘At least I’m Wanted!’

_Ha, right!_ Harry snorted and blew at the printed flame. It fluttered, almost catching Snape’s hair.

Snape glared so fiercely that Harry wondered if a photo of a Legilimens could read minds.

But Harry refused to let the moment of worry onto his face; instead he smirked and replied in a not-guilty-not-even-one-bit tone, “Lucky your head didn’t burst into flames, what with all that grease.” He reached out and poked the photograph Snape right in the chest.

Snape turned up his beak and tried to lean away, but all the same he didn’t back all the way out of sight beyond his frame.

“Are you going to snap at me now like Hedwig?”

Snape licked his lips deliberately, before giving a smirk so sharp it looked as though it should have a serpent’s tongue flickering between those uneven teeth.

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. He was pretty certain Wizarding photographs didn’t bite; though with his luck, if anyone’s could, it’d be Snape’s. “Oi! Don’t even think about it. I’d bite you right back, so be told!”

Snape tossed his head dismissively; the gesture flicked a strand of lank hair out of his face. He lifted his arm, leaning against the photo frame, his trailing black sleeve blocking Dumbledore’s one-eyed watchful glare. Then he crooked a finger, beckoning in a ‘Come here and say that’ manner.

Harry leaned in, nose to nose with the photo. “You heard me!”

Snape arched an eyebrow. Thin lips parted and he exhaled deliberately. The surface of the photo misted over, and he wrote swiftly before the fog could fade:

____spacer____

  
Harry watched in fascination as every letter was traced. _How’d he learn to write backwards so fast?_ “Oh yeah?” he exclaimed as the last word was finished. “I’d bite the real one back too! Don’t think I wouldn’t!”

Snape snorted in disbelief: it painted another plume of fog over the image, and he made the most of it.

____spacer____

  
“Er. Well. He never bit me first.” A sudden cheeky grin, “He just always looked like he was about to.”

Snape rolled his eyes and mouthed ‘I wonder why!’

Harry nodded. “So do I ! S’ not like I meant to irritate him. He just _was_ irritated, all the time.” He stared curiously at the photo, his eyes shining with an Idea. “Can you tell me why?”

Snape threw up his hands in despair, huffed all over the photo and began scribbling frantically.

____spacer____

  
Dishevelled, he panted another layer of mist and added:

____spacer____

  
“Do what?” Harry’s eyes went wide. “Are you mental? He only just started talking to me. I don’t want to make him go spare! S’why I’ve got you.” He grinned. “You’re the best photo of him I ever saw.”

Snape peered at him, slit-eyed with suspicion, as one hand rose to shove back a straggling hank of hair.

____spacer____

  
“No!” Harry exclaimed. “I mean it. Honest! I can’t ask him. At least your hexes will stay on that paper!”

Snape’s lips thinned in reluctant resignation.

____spacer____

  
Harry gave a wide grin, craned up and exhaled softly over the photo, before lifting a fingertip to the resulting steam, and giving Snape two horns and a moustache. “Well, well, Professor. You were never so cheeky to me in person. You better be nice to me. Y’know why?” He reached into his pocket and held up something no photographed Potions Master could possibly resist: a photograph of the Potions classroom. “Look what I’ve got.”

The Snape in the photograph took one lingering, longing look at the image of high shelves stocked with potions ingredients, then he seized the candle and gestured emphatically with it.

Harry sighed. _So much for that idea._ But another thought strayed into his mind, and refused to leave. _Can it possibly be that simple? If I come right out and ask Snape about something like **that**, what’re the odds he’d actually answer?_ He grinned ruefully, _As opposed to hexing me into the next millennium._

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF THE IMAGES

1

~~Hi, Snape,~~ Mr. Snape (Colloquialism) I’m sure you’re wondering what ~~the bloody hell~~ (Gratuitous) I’m ~~on~~ talking about. Well, here it is. (Sentence fragment) I was filling out a crossword the other day~~,~~; ~~only~~(Colloquialism) not really filling it out, just writing random things in the blanks to make them fit. ~~And~~ (caps)at the end it had your name up there, along with ~~lov~~ ~~regr~~ (Either admit or omit!) some other things. ~~And~~ (caps)that’s when I thought of something. (n.p.)Before Dumbledore told me about the horcruxes, and ordered you to kill him, it felt like he was always trying to get me to learn something from you. And I’m thinking~~,~~: perhaps he wanted us to work together~~.~~; (l.c.)~~M~~aybe even get along together. ~~Thing is,~~ (caps) even though ~~I reckon~~ I’ll never understand most of what Dumbledore did, I think I am starting to understand this. ~~We’ll never know for certain now, but here’s the thing.~~ (n.p.)You weren’t the only Professor I got mad at, when I was at school. Don’t snort, it’s true. Anyway. There was this one time, I ~~got~~ became so ~~bloody~~ (Gratuitous!) furious with Professor Dumbledore I went completely ~~mental.~~ insane. I (l.c.) ~~S~~mashed pretty much everything in his office. I (l.c.)~~M~~ade a ~~hell of a bloody~~ (Gratuitous!) mess~~.~~, (l.c.)~~A~~nd he just sat back and didn’t turn a hair or lift a finger to stop me. (n.p.)But ~~you know what?~~ (Rhetorical question) (l.c.)~~A~~ll those years I spent ~~pissed off~~ annoyed (Still gratuitous!) at you, all those years I thought of you as just Snape ~~–~~ or ~~death~~ ~~eate~~ ~~basta~~ ~~rotten~~ ~~greasy~~ (Is this a letter or a blotter, Potter?) worse~~.~~: (l.c.)~~H~~e never once let me get away with calling you just Snape. Every single time I tried it where he could hear me, he’d always give me this look. (You know the one, over his glasses~~.~~: (l.c.)~~T~~he one where he’s so disappointed in you it makes you feel about two inches tall.) Well, he’d give me that look, every time, and he’d say “Professor Snape.” Every single time. ~~And, well,~~ I ~~reckon~~ think (Colloquialism) that meant something. I’d really like to find out what~~.~~, (l.c.)~~A~~nd I hope I’m not too late. ~~And~~ (caps)what I hope most of all~~,~~ is that you won’t mind helping me~~,~~ just one more time.

Harry.

Were this one of your school essays,  
I would have assigned you detention,  
and personally supervised it  
just to be sure you served it properly.          - Snape.

2

Lunch Saturday?

  
3

YES!

  


 - Harry

  


P.S. Your place or mine?

  
4  
YOU ARE NOT SO CHEEKY TO THE REAL ME

5  
YOU HAD SIX YEARS TO DO SO, AND DIDN’T

6  
THERE ARE NO PHOTOS LARGE ENOUGH FOR ME TO EVEN BEGIN

7  
JUST ASK THE REAL ME!

8  
ARE YOU BUTTERING ME UP?

9  
UNFORTUNATELY. NOT FOR WANT OF TRYING EITHER.

  


* * *

1  Four pages of proof marks and their meanings: [1](http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/profmrk1.htm) [2](http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/profmrk2.htm) [3](http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/profmrk3.htm) [4](http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/profmrk4.htm) _  
_


	7. Lunch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spinner's End — 31st October, 1998

Harry’s reflection was just as much of a scruffy berk at one o’clock as it had been at noon. He sighed, yanked off the tie he’d spent the morning selecting, and fingercombed his hair from disaster to mere disarray.

Five minutes later he was back at the bathroom mirror. He wet his comb and slicked his fringe over his eyes (it promptly sprang back up), and pushed his glasses up his nose (they immediately slid back down). _Bugger! _He unbuttoned his sleeves, rolled them up, and peered into the mirror. _Hm?_

Nah. He unrolled and buttoned them, and spent a while fussing over the resulting wrinkles.

At twenty past one, he cut the fuss short with a manly “Sod it all!” and rolled the sleeves back up above his elbows.

At half past, he sprawled in his chair counting the seconds, accompanied by Hedwig’s amused clucking. _How many seconds are in thirty minutes? Sixty times sixty times thirty... or is it just sixty times thirty? ... bloody hell, that’s a lot no matter how you count it. _

At two o’clock his portkey shook and shuddered.

Harry startled, dropped it on the floor and lunged at the yellow plastic bottlecap like a Seeker after the snitch._ Is it still moving? Am I too late? _He shook the still-shivering cap. _Nonono, DAMMIT!_

It sucked him into a whirlwind of magic, which twisted and turned and spat him out on the bank of a dirty river. Up the embankment was a knot of abandoned buildings. Across the river, ragged trees rose from dry underbrush.

Harry blinked at the trees, then at the river, brown and oily, and then at the deactivated portkey in his hand. _Huh. _

He’d travelled a fair way from Hogwarts. Wherever he was now, clouds were looming with the threat of a rainy afternoon. At least it wasn’t so cold, but the air reeked of pollution. He turned to look behind him, and something crunched under his boot. A skull, not human. Probably a dog. _Ugh! What is this place?_ “He _did_ say two, didn’t he?” Harry muttered under his breath, “What time is it now?”

“It’s ‘time’ someone had a word with you,” Snape’s voice announced right over his shoulder, “about all the run-on sentences you put in your letters.”

Harry spun around, hearing a rustle of fabric just out of reach.

The air in front of him rippled like a mirage, forming the faint outline of someone tapping himself on the head with a wand. The outline turned solid: tall-dark-and-sarky, large as life and twice as beaky.

Snape stood on the riverbank, his robes trailing over the underbrush. Behind him a bit of ground had been cleared among the tangled growth, and in its midst lay a threadbare rug. The rug was an improbably cheerful tartan, maybe an old gift from Dumbledore, or even McGonagall. On the rug sat something even more unlikely: a wicker picnic basket. Between the thoroughly Muggle industrial slum and the colourful picnic gear, Snape looked about as much at home as a vulture at a budgie show. Not that he was about to admit to feeling, or being, out of place. Instead, he loftily informed Harry, “I prefer to avoid crowds,” and waved one hand in an ironic, ushering gesture at the cheery rug, “Well, go on, do sit down.”

“Yes, Professor.” For some reason, the title came to Harry now, as readily as it _didn’t_ at school.

“Potter,” Snape growled, “Call me ‘Professor’ one more time, and I’ll hex you till you howl.”

“Oi!” _Pot, kettle!_ (Harry pictured said kettle, with a dull black sheen and an upside-down hawkish spout.) “Call me ‘Potter’ one more time and I’ll howl, _without_ you hexing me!”

That actually surprised a splutter out of Snape.

“Honestly,” Harry grumbled, reckoning it was his turn to be grumpy, “Harry’s fine. Everyone calls me Harry.” He glanced around the riverbank. The river stank of dead fish, mixing with the ever present Muggle fumes. He tried not to wrinkle his nose, for fear of insulting Snape. “This is, er. Different.”

Snape watched, his mouth twisting in a smirk. “There’s nothing that screens out the reek of pollution like a wide-area Bubble-head Charm,” he confided, an amused glint in his eyes. He flicked his wand in demonstration and added an air-purifying charm at the end.

Harry took a sniff, letting it out in a relieved whew. “Thanks!”

Snape continued, “I would’ve preferred a less desolate spot, but I’d rather not risk being seen. If it’s all the same to you.”

“S’fine,” Harry plonked himself down on the tartan blanket. “So, what’s for lunch?”

Snape smiled like a shark. “Wait and see.”

Harry peered over his shoulder. And waited, and waited, and... _Finally!_

Apparently, the first item on the menu was cheese. It was a flat lump about the size of a meat pie, with a crust as fuzzy as white velvet and a middle almost as runny as thick cream. _Weird_. Harry eyed it dubiously. He stuck one gooey bit on a piece of wafer-thin toast about half the size of a normal slice of bread, and took a cautious nibble. _Salty... but not mouldy, not like blue cheese. Mmm, really good!_ He wolfed the rest of the piece and helped himself to more.

_Why the hell’s the toast so small, anyway? A bloke can’t fit a decent lump of cheese on something this titchy._ So Harry held two more slices edge-to-edge and trailed a bigger blob of cheese over them both. _There. Much better._ He devoured it then licked smears of creamy-salty goodness from his lips and his fingertips.

Then he realised he was being stared at.

Snape cleared his throat. “Ah, perhaps I should’ve brought more.”

“Didn’t have breakfast,” Harry explained. “What is it? S’good.”

“Camembert,” Snape indicated the cheese, then the stack of tiny slices of bread, as methodical as if listing potions ingredients, “and Melba toast.”

“Oh,” Harry nodded, his mouth full. “Sounds posh.” _And probably not something I’m supposed to bolt in single bites._

Snape snorted. As well as amused, he seemed almost... relieved. “Posh version of a ploughman’s lunch, perhaps. Pass the pickle.” He used a blob of cheese to glue two Melba toasts into a tiny sandwich, and munched it with gusto.

Harry grabbed the jar - ordinary Branston pickle - and tossed it across the blanket to Snape, who caught it and spread pickle on two more bits of toast, before repeating the sandwich performance.

It looked like a good idea, so Harry nicked the jar off him and did the same. Afterwards he licked crumbs off his lips and grinned. _The bugger does get good ideas occasionally, what with the picnic and pickle and-_ He peered into the picnic basket. “What else’ve you got?” He shoved his arm in up to the shoulder, rummaged around a bit - raising a distant rattle of crockery - and surfaced with a bottle of red wine.

Snape pulled the cork with a simple Accio as Harry hung onto the bottle, then as Harry read the label it was Snape’s turn to rummage in the picnic basket and pull out a pair of glasses.

Harry peered dubiously at them. He’d be the first to admit that he didn’t know a lot about wine, but those didn’t look anything like wineglasses.

“They’re functional,” Snape grumbled. “Or does the hero of the wizarding world require something gold and ruby-encrusted?”

Harry picked up one of them. On closer examination they weren’t even glasses, just laboratory beakers with a pouring lip. He’d used ones just like them in class to measure out toad slime and beetle juice, hawk spit and sour hippogriff milk. It wasn’t that Harry thought the beakers weren’t clean or anything; Snape kept his lab glassware spotless, if only to prevent contaminating his potions. But this was their first meeting without insults or hexes, or endless, awkward silences which were somehow almost as painful as the hexes. It was worth marking the occasion. Somehow. This was his one chance to impress the grumpy git and show him that Harry could also pull rabbits out of a hat, or at least pull luxuries out of a ratty old picnic basket.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Snape, before getting up and wandering off toward the river.

A short while later he came back with two toadstools picked from the riverbank. He pointed his wand at one and concentrated. _C’mon._ The toadstool grew and moved: its cap turned inside out like an umbrella in the wind, forming a cup with gill-striped sides. Pale yellow brightened, shifting to polished silver.

“McGonagall says any fifth-year can turn beetles into needles, but making a cup out of a toadstool cap is as hard as making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Quite proud, Harry set the silver goblet next to the wine bottle. Then he transfigured the other goblet for himself.

Snape watched the process with interest, but before he poured the wine, he inspected the goblets’ surfaces for imperfections, and cast a cleaning charm on the inside.

Beaming, Harry grabbed another piece of cheese.

*

“So, Flitwick’s standing in the middle of the library all excited, you know how he gets, telling McGonagall about the latest Charms research. Said he’d read about a new incantation for a wandless Silencio. Well, of course McGonagall asks him what the incantation is, and right then Madam Pince comes up and says-”

“Shhh!” Snape hissed, so quiet that Harry could barely hear him.

“Yeah, like that!” Harry grinned.

Snape scowled and laid his left hand over Harry’s mouth, even as he drew his wand and stared warily around them.

Harry blinked, then leaned forward, mouthing “What?” through Snape’s fingers, even as a shiver of uneasiness closed his own fingers round his wand handle.

It earned him Snape’s harshest glare, the one usually accompanied by a cry of of ‘Imbecile!’ But all Snape actually said was “Heard something,” and even that was in a whisper.

Harry drew his wand and looked around, fighting the temptation to take his glasses off and clean them. “I don’t hear anything,” he muttered under his breath. To the left, the underbrush rustled in the faint river breeze, just as it had done ever since they’d arrived. To the right, Hedwig hunted something in the grass.

Harry squinted in Hedwig’s direction. Something on the ground glinted, probably a scrap of tinfoil.

Snape whirled, aimed his wand. “Petrificus totalus!”

_Whoa!_ Harry nearly hexed Snape, but he realised only just in time that Snape wasn’t aiming at Hedwig, but at the ground below her.

Hedwig clicked her beak at Snape, unhappy that his hex had beaten her to her prey, but she swooped all the same and lifted a rat’s body out of the grass. It hung from her talons, as stiff as if it had been stuffed. Hedwig squawked victoriously and flapped towards them.

It was then, that Harry saw the glint again. Not tinfoil after all; the rat’s paw. Silver.

At that instant a curse flashed, startling as a streak of lightning from a clear sky. It narrowly missed Snape and zoomed past them, burning tendrils reaching for where Hedwig flew, a pale blur. And then Harry couldn’t see her anymore, just clouds of acrid smoke and white feathers settling on the ground.

Harry squinted past the stinging wet in his eyes: the smoke, making his eyes fill. But even through the billows he could see another cloaked figure.

“All right there, pet?” The voice - a woman’s - came from uphill. Harry thought he’d heard her before, somewhere. _But where?_

He stepped back, until he bumped into Snape’s bony back, just as tense as his own. Snape did not turn. Instead, he intoned coldly, “Gentlemen,” both mocking his foes and informing Harry of their presence. His braced back was as solid as a wall, but his elbow trembled against Harry’s, barely perceptibly, as if counting down beats.

_Surrounded. No way out but to fight. Fine. I can do this. I’m all right, I’ve got my wand right here._ Suddenly, like during his first real attack, the names of all serious battle hexes but Impedimenta escaped him.

But this was not a classroom duel, it wasn’t even war. It was an ambush, and that meant they’d use any damn unfair tactics they could, to kill him. And not only him, Snape was here too...

Harry clutched his wand in a grip tight enough to strangle. There was one Unforgiveable he’d never forget, it’d played such a starring role in his childhood nightmares. _Buggered if I’m letting these bastards hurt him._

From the grass in front of him, Wormtail’s squat shape rose. _Should’ve let Sirius finish the slimy little sod._

Harry fired. The flare of another curse intersected his: the energies clashed in a blast, as dizzying as a kick to the head. Harry shook his head to clear it, and lunged as Wormtail raised his stubby wand. His silver hand flashed as he cast. Harry ducked instinctively, and the curse sizzled over him and hit Snape square between his bony shoulder blades, right in the back that Harry was supposed to be protecting. The impact sent Snape flying, limbs outflung at awkward angles, arms tangled in his cloak. When he landed with a thud, Harry caught a glimpse of his face, pallid and slack behind his hair. He looked like he was out cold. Or worse.

Harry leapt for him, despite raised wands and flying curses, despite the enemies surrounding them. He landed on a twig, which broke; the pieces rolled under his foot and he skidded and fell. He landed shoulder-first, moving on instinct to turn the fall into a forward roll. He came out of the roll by Snape’s body, already casting Protego Maximus. He paused there, in a protective crouch, wand out and ready, the worst Unforgiveable poised on the tip of his tongue.

_Try me, fuckers! Try, and die._

Behind him Snape gasped, drawing a long, raw breath. Then he began to moan: a low, wrenching sound, the groan of a dying man. With a pang, Harry tore his eyes away from the menacing shapes to look down.

Snape looked hideous. His eyes had rolled up until they were just eerie slits of white, but whatever was happening wasn’t as simple, or as quick, as death. The terrible sound went on and on: a low and guttural groan, much longer than a lungful, it grew in dread with every passing moment, building an undertone that rumbled like an earthquake, echoed like a tomb, gaping for human flesh. It was as bad as a banshee’s wail, or a dementor’s greedy suction ...and then Harry felt it: a rush of Dark Magic, rolling outward past him, unstoppable as a tsunami, borne on that awful cry.

The next moment, the cry was returned. Screams, full-throated, terrified, a rising chorus of them: first the men surrounding them, then the woman in the distance. Their trembling forms folded in on themselves under a crushing weight of horror. Then the many threads of the scream ended as abruptly as they’d begun, with a rapid volley of popping: multiple panicked Disapparations.

When the last Disapparation sounded, Snape’s harrowing cry choked off, in a cough that was so ordinary by comparison that it startled a nervy half-laugh from Harry.

Snape blinked up at him. That familiar dark stare had never looked so good, so much better than those horrible white eyeballs. Harry dropped to his knees and clutched at Snape’s shoulders. “Are you all right?” He looked Snape up and down. _No blood. Good._ Snape nodded tersely and Harry sagged with relief. _Whew!_ Only then did he notice a flutter of white: Hedwig cleaning her claws and clacking victoriously at the grass. _Alive!_ He turned back to check on Snape once more. _Yeah, alive!_

Snape coughed again, and spat into the grass as if ridding his mouth of something foul. “_Hate_ singing deathcant,” he growled savagely under his breath, then the next instant his hand flashed up to return Harry’s clasp with a tight grip on his arm. “Are _you_ all right?” he croaked, returning Harry’s searching stare with one of his own, “With a leap like that, it’s a wonder you didn’t break your neck. I could’ve sworn I heard it snap.”

“Very funny,” Harry looked around for the twig that’d sent him tumbling. _Damn thing!_ He fumbled with the broken pieces under his boot. They were smooth, ...too smooth to be just a twig, he realised with a pang as he picked them up. They were black, as glossy as a piano key, and snapped in half. By Harry’s foot. Through an appalled daze, he distantly saw that the hollowed core was empty. The handle was severely plain, with none of the usual intricate lathework or carving. The only things distinguishing the handle from the shaft were a matte finish for better grip, and a slightly greater thickness.

Slow and inevitable as the arriving rush of Hogwarts Express, the full realisation dawned on Harry of exactly what he held. Exactly what he’d done. He saw Snape’s face grow pale. He felt his own hand tremble. _His wand! I broke his wand! Fuck! Why the hell didn’t I watch where I was going?_ He looked around frantically for the core, but he could only see the white of Hedwig’s lost feathers in the windblown grass. “Bloody hell! I’m so sorry. Do you think it can be fixed?” he asked in a small voice.

Snape turned to the hollow pieces Harry offered to him, giving them a serious, stern look, and then - instead of shouting or yelling or cursing Harry in terrifying, wandless retribution like he’d just cursed their attackers - he looked up and slowly shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. At least it’s not your neck,” he grumbled softly. And then his mouth twitched, in something that might have even been a smile.

*

The bespectacled brat’s eyes shone. _Nothing like a good old fashioned free-for-all to get the blood flowing,_ Snape thought. _That’s something we’ve got in common, anyway. I suppose he doesn’t get nearly enough excitement at Hogwarts, either as a volunteer house elf or as McGonagall’s poster boy._

Snape gave Harry a sharp, sated little smirk. He thought back on the glimpses of Harry he’d caught during the battle. Of course there’d been no time to think of such things then, but now the memories came back to him, vivid as dreams, blurred with speed or frozen in the lightning-bursts of spellfire. There were moments during the fight when Harry had moved like he’d never known the coltish clumsiness of a teenaged boy. For just a few, fleeting flashes the bumbling fool from his classroom was gone, replaced by a fierce young man for whom magical combat came as naturally as Quidditch. Safe in the privacy of his own mind, Snape could relive those glimpses of flying hair and wild eyes, and a wand breathing fire like a dragon.

Snape was no stranger to combat, of the magical or Muggle sort - in several senses, he’d been a scarred veteran before he left school. But this had been an entirely new experience for him. Someone else beside him, fighting _with_ him, instead of against him. And it was an even greater shock to have, not only an ally for once in his life, but one who actually had a vague clue how to fight: bloody well hidden though it was, somewhere under all that bumbling eagerness and Gryffindor bravado.

Snape bent his head to hide the smile he suspected had disobeyed his sternest orders and crept onto his face. He half-turned away from Harry and the blasted bits of wand, and made a show of inspecting the dirt-stained blanket, and the picnic basket with three hex-singed holes, and the two goblet-sized toadstools with broken stems. Potter ran an idle finger over one wine-soaked stem, and for a second looked as if he were about to lick the liquid off his fingertip. Which would have been utter foolishness if not suicide and incredibly stupid even for him.

“Y’know what we should do?” Harry said instead.

“Mmm?” Snape Scourgified Harry’s hands and banished the toadstools just to be on the safe side, then shrunk the cutlery and crockery and pocketed them. The hexed basket was beyond Reparo-ing.

“Let’s go down the pub and get plastered!”

Snape paused pointedly, before turning to glare at Harry. “Are you insane?”

“Oi, it’s a good idea! Yeah, It’ll attract some attention, but it’s the last place anyone’d expect us to be. Let’s show the bastards we’re not afraid!”

“Potter,” Snape declared in tones that parodied patience, “You don’t _jeer_ at assassins for not trying hard enough! Because then they BLOODY TRY HARDER!”

Harry shrugged. “They will anyway, and we might as well have a pint or ten before they give it another go.”

“Hmph.” said Snape. In an odd way, Harry’s idea sounded sensible, which obviously meant Snape needed to think again. He shook loose dirt out of the blanket, shrunk it to the size of a handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. “I’ve discovered the secret of your survival: you’re even madder than your enemies.”

“How ‘bout Hogsmeade?” The impossible whelp not only ignored his teasing completely, he gave Snape a wide grin, then reached out and clapped him on the shoulder before he could sidestep. “I’m buying. What d’you say?” As if Snape was one of his Quidditch mates.

“Damn right you’re buying,” Snape groused, determined not to find all that chirpiness charming. “I’m skint.”

“Anytime,” Harry nodded. “I owe it to you anyway.” He beamed up at Snape, “You were absolutely bloody brilliant.”

He kept his arm around Snape’s shoulder all the way through the side-along Apparation.

*

“Wow! Just wow! That was wicked, the way you had ‘em all running scared, without even lifting a wand!” Harry winced at the reminder of his awful blunder, and added in a more sombre tone, “And here I thought you were just being paranoid, but you were right all along! They really are after you.” He waved his drink to the general direction of outside. “Everyone!” _How does he do it? I’d be worried sick, always looking over my shoulder._

But Snape didn’t seem worried, he just laced his spidery fingers round his own glass and gave Harry a dubious look. “They’ve been after you for almost as long. How the hell can the concept still come as a surprise?”

“But it’s all over! I got rid of Voldemort. Don’t they know when to give up?” Harry hit the tabletop with his fist for emphasis. _Ow! When did they start making tables that hard?_

“Don’t be absurd,” Snape replied curtly, “It won’t be ‘over’ until the last Death Eater, and anyone who might care to avenge them, is dead or Kissed. And even then, it’ll only be a matter of time before another Dark Wizard attempts to step into Riddle’s smoking shoes.”

“But _why_?” Harry peered into his drink: a looking-glass answer to every ‘why’ in the world. From there, his gaze strayed to Snape’s breast pocket, with two sticks of dark polished wood, one slimmer and shorter than the other, both hollow. That seemed important, so Harry asked, through the drunken haze, “Why’s your wand empty?”

“No idea what you’re on about. The core must’ve fallen out when it broke.” Snape shrugged, perfectly offhand.

Harry nodded. “We’ll have to find you a new one.” He took out his own wand and offered it, handle first. “I s’pose phoenix feather or holly wouldn’t get along well with you, but here, try mine for now.”

Snape shuddered delicately, his fingers curling inward with a quiver of disgust, like an ailing spider’s legs. “No thank you. I shall manage quite well without.”

“What d’you mean ‘without’?” Harry blinked. “Completely without? But what if they come after you again? Tonight!” He glanced around them in alarm, but Aberforth’s pub was empty, except for a hag in the opposite corner and a goat sleeping under a barstool. “You can’t go back. They’ll kill you, or worse. I’ve got a couch - back at Hogwarts, in my rooms. You can stay till we get you a new wand.”

Snape stared at him.

“C’mon, it’s a brilliant plan! We’ll floo in and out.” Harry grinned. “McGonagall won’t even know, much less anyone else.”

Snape drew breath to spit out ‘Certainly not!’ but in that instant he remembered all the many difficulties of surviving a siege of indefinite duration, alone. Hogwarts Castle was certainly better built and warded to weather attack than his parents’ shabby little two-up-two-down: for all the wards Snape had put up around Spinner’s End, Hogwarts had generations’ worth of defensive spells. Thus, he actually found himself choking out through a throat tight with disbelief, “All right.” On the heels of the decision came a completely uncharacteristic (and perhaps alcohol-fuelled) sense of elation: the giddy feeling of going out on a lark, that he might’ve experienced perhaps once in his miserable adolescence. “I’d love to see the look on her face when she finally finds out!”

“Bet she’d go spare!” Potter laughed, his eyes shining with drunken daring. “S’ok, we’ll hide you really good,” he assured Snape, “I’ll lend you my cloak.”

“_That_ bastard thing!” Snape snorted explosively, eyed his glass and took a long swig. “Bloody cloak let you traipse up and down the corridors all night long. Did you ever spend time in your own bed?”

“‘Course!” The imp nodded. “Like a good little Gryffindor. Oi, don’t look at me like that, s’true! If I was as horrible as you think, I’d’ve done more than wanderin’ round your dungeons.”

“Ohyeah?” Snape drew himself up to his full height. “Prove it! What could you possibly have got up to that you _didn’t?_” The room began to spin. Somewhere, a rational part of his mind supplied that there was a reason he always carried sobering solutions with him during his time as a spy, but he really didn’t want to think of the bad old days right now.

“Oh, just about anything besides my usual walking ‘n’ thinking.” Potter eyed Snape’s glass, then Snape, with the daring look of a true troublemaker. “I - I could’ve got into your office anytime, found my homework and changed all those ‘T’s into ‘O’s!”

“Ha! As if you handed in any homework - as opposed to paper that had been used to line Bubbles’ cage.”

“Oi! I handed in everything you asked for! Took me bloody ages to finish it, too. Not my fault my teacher was a demanding, stubborn sod.” Harry glared at the glass as if it was to blame for everything, especially his ‘T’s, and drained it.

“At least you picked up a trick or two in Defense.” Snape muttered, then blinked. _Shouldn’t’ve said that._ His startlement deepened. _Bloody hell, I’m turning into Hagrid!_ To distract himself from further babbling, he did the only logical thing and took another sip.

_Too late._ Harry positively beamed in delight, “I did? Like what?”

Snape harrumphed. “Well, I suppose your _Protego_ wasn’t entirely incompetent. Not that I paid particular attention.”

“Thank you!” The brat looked like he’d just received a birthday present. “And ‘course y’never noticed...” Harry chuckled almost affectionately, his glasses crooked on his face, as he reached out to nudge Snape’s drink closer, encouraging him to finish it off. “...Liar.”

Snape swept up his glass to rescue it from marauding Potter hands. Once it was in his grasp he had to reassure it after the close call by having another sip. “How would you know? Always were pants at Occluding. Pants!” he repeated for emphasis. “_And_ Legilimencin’,” he added before taking another swig.

For a while Potter boggled at him in wide-eyed, smudgy-spectacled wonder. At last he snapped out of his haze and nudged at Snape’s elbow. “C’mon. We better get home before you ruin my entire student reputation in one go. I’ve got firewhiskey at home.”

Something about the beginning of that sentence made Snape forget the promised firewhiskey. “How’d I ruin your reputation? Student’s’ve got a reputation for drinkin’. S’what they do. Drinkin’. N’wanderin’ th’halls n’drivin’ a man to an early grave tryna keep ‘em outta trouble.”

“Mmm-hmm, that they do.” Harry agreed, extending his hand to Snape. “That firewhiskey in my rooms - I con-” Harry faltered, “Bugger! -constipated it from sixth-years.” His face lit up with the new mission. “To the fireplace! Quick!” he gestured. “Before they sneak in an’ consecrate it back!”

“Little sods!” Snape lurched to his feet and stalked floo-wards, as menacing as if his wand wasn’t in two pieces. “I’ll hex ‘em if they try!”

*

  


“I won’t be long,” Mum said. “Stay in there till I get back. You’ll be fine.” But she was already looking away from Severus; up and down Diagon Alley, checking that no-one was around who’d recognise her when she nicked off down Knockturn to haggle for ingredients, and maybe, if he was lucky, for cheap school supplies.

“Mu-u-um!” He put just the right amount of disgusted whine into his voice to annoy her. _Maybe this way she’ll leave me be!_ “Course I’ll be orright! M’not a baby!” He tugged his hand out of hers and tromped the few steps to the wandmaker’s door, for once enjoying the loud stomping of his ill-fitting (you’ll-grow-into-’em) boots.

“Just stay put!” Mum snapped, determined to get the last word. “Or I’ll tan yer arse meself, never mind yer Da! And you-”

Severus had a last word of his own by ducking inside and shutting the door, not quite hard enough to slam it, but fast enough to cut her off mid-rant.

After Mum’s nagging and the unfamiliar bustle and noise and all the strange witches and wizards, the shop was almost a shock. It engulfed him like a cave, dark and cool and soothing and so quiet he could hear his own breathing, slowing in the dusty hush. Severus shook his hair out of his eyes and stared. Even for someone as small and scrawny as him, the shop was cramped, but it wasn’t like the push and shove of the crowds outside. It was fascinating, even better than Flourish and Blotts, because he was alone. No-one shoved or stared. No-one watched, waiting for him to nick something, or scolded him for touching things with grubby hands.

Floor to ceiling, the walls were filled with narrow shelves, and every shelf bristled with hundreds and hundreds of thin boxes, their square ends papered with symbols in alphabets Severus had never seen. He stepped forward, burning with curiosity, suddenly desperate to know what the strange sigils meant. He reached for a box poking a bit further out from its shelf than the others, and right at that moment a rustle behind him made him startle and snatch his hand back, in a reflex trained by a hundred surly shopkeepers.

An old man was peering owlishly over the counter at him. The man was so wizened and frail that even Severus didn’t feel threatened, not when he was used to assessing danger from men in terms of his Da’s hard fists. But then he saw the old man’s eyes. They were _silver_, bright as the two sickles Mum had given him to buy a wand. The sight startled a gasped “Mr. Ollivander?” out of Severus, though he kicked himself the next moment. _Who else would it be?_

“Master Snape.” The man’s voice was as thin and wispy as he was, but something about that pale stare felt as though it was going through Severus and into the wand shelf behind him. “I wondered when I might see you in my shop. How is your mother? Dragon heartstring, weeping willow, splintery, good for hexes.”

Mum’s wand _was_ good for hexes, Severus knew that from experience: both on the receiving end, and practicing his own hexes on flies. Though any splinters on the handle had been worn out long ago, by Mum’s hand or his own. He outgrew that wand when he was seven, like a snake finally breaking free of the eggshell keeping it coiled in a knot. After that he usually didn’t bother Mum for her wand. He got along just fine without it.

_Look at ‘em all. Must be thousands of ‘em. What’s the point? I s’pose there must be one, but buggered if I know what it is. I guess there must be something you’ve got to have a wand to do. Something._

Typical, that wandless magic was all he could think about, under the eye of the wandmaker, in a place where thousands of wands had been sold for hundreds of years. All that fuss down the ages, about wooden phials of expensive potions ingredients. Wands weren’t magic, just channels for a wizard’s magic, like the wires that carried Muggle electricity. Lifeless idols to magic, that people worshipped like magic itself.

He thought about keeping the money and buggering off out of it, while the old man apparently ignored him in favour of digging through the piles of dusty boxes he hoarded like a dragon’s gold. The boxes were opened, their contents lined up on the countertop. Intricately lathe-turned, delicately hand-carved, gleamingly polished, but really just sticks, for all Ollivander’s proud litany of names: ash, elm and oak, walnut, birch and yew.

Not just English woods, either, exotic timbers as well: cedar and maple, ebony and teak. Any of those woods alone had to be worth more than Severus had with him. The time the wandmaker spent with lathe or carving knife, let alone with magic, had to be worth much more. And that wasn’t even counting the cost of the core. Even if Severus wanted a wand made of a dry twig from the riverbank at home and his own hair, any wand from this man would have to cost more than Severus could ever afford.

“Now, now, young Master Snape,” the thready voice sounded behind him, just as he turned toward the door, “come over here and let’s see which wood suits you best, hm?” There was something a bit too knowing to be comfortable in that voice; Severus suspected the door wouldn’t open for him if he tried it now. So he sighed inwardly and peered at the array of wands laid out before him on the countertop in a rainbow of different timbers.

He went for the pine first, since that was probably the cheapest wood. It lay inert in his hand, refusing to spit so much as a spark. The other woods weren’t any better; the rosewood resented him bitterly enough to sprout thorns, and even Mr. Ollivander declared that cherry was “just not your wood at all, oh dearie me, no.” It was with dread that Severus found himself forced to resort to the foreign - and no doubt expensive - woods. But they were no more cooperative. Severus was just starting to wonder if all this wand business wasn’t a way for purebloods to make half-Muggles like himself feel useless, when his hand closed on the blackest wood of all, and after an intense effort on his part, the wand disgorged a sullen plume of flame.

“I thought so,” Ollivander said in satisfied tones, seeming quite unfazed by the large pile of rejected woods. “You’re a one-wood wizard, Master Snape. No doubt about it, nothing but ebony will do.” Severus’ heart sank to his boots. _Ebony. All the way from Africa. Two sickles won’t even come close!_ He was so despondent he almost didn’t catch Ollivander’s muttered postscript, “But not, I think, dragon heartstring. You’re more than your mother’s son.” Severus looked up sharply, searching that wrinkled face for veiled racial slurs, but finding only vague benevolence. “Just a moment and we’ll try you with the other two cores.”

He pulled down two more boxes, laying the wands reverently on the counter beside the one Severus had just used. All three were black, sleek, glossy with polish, but their handles were quite different. The handle of the one he’d just been waving was carved with scales, while one of the new arrivals was lathe-turned in a pattern of bands, and the other was carved like feathers.

He picked up the banded one. Unlike the first, which had felt heavy and reluctant in his hand, like his Mum’s always did, this one felt light as a toothpick, and fragile, as though it would shatter like porcelain if he dropped it. The spray of fire came instantly, with none of the former sluggishness and reluctance, but it was a feeble thing, pallid and shortlived.

Ollivander shook his head. “Not unicorn hair either,” he declared, before nodding with an anticipatory smile toward the third wand. “Go ahead, give it a wave.”

Severus nearly set the shop on fire. It would’ve been brilliant, if he hadn’t been trying for a simple Lumos.

Ollivander coughed and waved away the smoke. “_Not_ phoenix feather either! Drat.”

‘Drat’ was far too small a word for the dismay Severus felt. Apparently only one wood would work for him, and he’d just tried all three cores. He couldn’t stop himself from wailing aloud, “But nothing works!”

“Nothing...” Ollivander echoed, in the distant tones of someone in intense thought. Abruptly he turned away and tottered toward a small door behind the counter, disappearing into the back of the shop.

He returned a short while later, with another ebony wand. Unlike all the other wands Severus had ever seen, this wand’s handle was as plain as its shaft, without carvings of any kind. Its wood was smooth, but lacked the high polish of the other wands as well. Ollivander was brushing powdery sawdust from it; obviously it was fresh from the worktable. Severus brightened a bit at this. _Maybe it’ll be cheaper, without all those fancy frills._ He eyed it as Ollivander laid it on the counter. It looked very plain beside the other three finished wands, but Severus decided he liked plainness. _It’s practical. Nothing sticking out to catch on my sleeve. I could draw it wicked fast in a duel._

Severus picked it up. It didn’t weigh his hand down, or feel light and fragile, or tingle distractingly and make him want to cast for no reason, just to show off. He didn’t get any feeling from it at all, but after the last three, that was an improvement. He slipped it up his sleeve, like he was used to doing with Mum’s wand to hide it from Da. It was longer than her wand (but, his mind supplied in her inevitable reminder, he’d grow into it.)

_One, two,_ his heart beat like a dance. _One, two, three._

His fingers closed on the handle and time slowed to a crawl. “_Expel_-” it slid out of his sleeve quick as greased lightning “-_liar_-” he aimed at Ollivander “-_mus_!”

The spell flew straight as an arrow, fast as thought, breaking like a wave against the floor-to-ceiling cliffs of shelves. Every box in the shop rustled, as if all the wands in them stood up like quills on a hedgehog, and pointed back at Severus.

Severus was grinning with triumph. Mum’s wand only ever listened to him after he fought it into submission, forcing his stubborn, practiced-wandless magic to channel through it, a process as exhausting and frustrating as trying to reroute a river through a hosepipe. This wand, on the other hand: it didn’t feel like an extension of his arm, as Mum had said a properly fitted wand should feel, but at least it wasn’t a dam blocking his magic.

Then Ollivander waved the spell away, just like he’d waved away the smoke, with one bony, empty hand. Severus frowned, brought abruptly back to earth. He stared from the wand in his hand to the wandmaker.

“What’s in here? Veela hair? You doing a Gregorovich?” Severus hoped not: a core that wasn’t one of Ollivander’s usual three would have to be even more expensive than they were.

Ollivander shook his head slowly, and Severus could feel the weight of that silver stare on him. For some reason he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact.

“No core worked with your magic, so that’s what I’ve given you,” Ollivander said in a grave whisper. “No core.”

“But, but that’s not possible!” Severus spluttered. “It works great! Better’n those three!”

“Nevertheless,” Ollivander replied in that maddeningly serene voice, “There’s nothing in your wand but pure vacuum.” _Vacuum_, Severus thought, _the Void!_ His mind was whirling with possibilities, so much so that he almost missed the note of utter seriousness in the wandmaker’s voice as he concluded, “And that’s something you’ll want to say nothing about, Master Snape. Nothing to anyone, ever.”

Severus nodded, and swallowed, and asked the question he had to ask, “What do I owe you?”

A thin smile dawned on that wizened face. “Nothing, Master Snape. Nothing. It’s only fitting.”

Severus thanked him profusely, positively giddy with the thought of two whole sickles to spend. He fled the shop before the wandmaker could change his mind, two sickles clutched in one sweaty fist, his brand new wand clutched even harder in the other.

Later, when the euphoria faded, Severus realised that it made perfect sense for Ollivander to ask him to keep quiet. Of course, the sole wandmaker in Britain wouldn’t want word getting out that wandless magic is so easy even an eleven year old half-blood could do it. He’d go out of business!

And yet... Long after Severus left Diagon Alley behind, he kept remembering the assessing look in the old man’s strange, silvery eyes.

  


*

Somewhere behind him Harry bounced to keep up, stumbled into him and mumbled “m’Hogwarts room” into Snape’s back, right between his shoulderblades, as the flames exploded green. Snape spun and clutched hard at his guide as the Floo whirled around them. A stomach-churning eternity later they stumbled out of a smaller fireplace and into the darkened room.

“FuckIhatefloo,” Snape muttered miserably. He was answered by an outraged phoenix squawk. Although the Floo flames were no longer green, he still felt rather green about the gills. Harry must’ve noticed it too.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” He gave Snape a gentle push toward an unmade, scroll-filled bed hiding in the opposite corner. “We better save the firewhiskey for tomorrow ‘n save _you_ from passing out on my - Wow, you’re a skinny sod, aren’tcha? M’surprised you’re still standing.”

Instead of voicing agreement, Snape staggered forward, toppling onto the only bit of the bed that wasn’t covered in scrolls. “S’why I don’t get pissed,” he muttered to himself, “just get pissed off.” He fumbled with his buttons; the topmost dug into his neck like a noose.

Something swept the scrolls around him aside, clearing more space. A warm, much more nimble hand covered his, unbuttoning the collar that was choking him. “Don’t worry,” Harry murmured with a warm, alcohol-soaked chuckle, “I won’t tell a soul.”

* * *

TRANSCRIPT OF THE IMAGES

1

WAND CORES: VOID?  
A core of nothingness. What does this mean? The symbolism is profound. A heartless wand. Yet nothing can be everything. Nothing is exactly what the Fifth Alchemical Element is. The highest secret of elemental alchemy is the Quintessence, the Void. I can see it representing who I am, my magical self. The shell is ebony: one of the hardest, strongest woods, needed to keep a true vacuum caged. But it is just a facade. Nothing, but a very powerful sort of Nothing: expectation. I’ll wield this wand, because it is expected of me, because it is a symbol of my status as a wizard. But only fools think wands are necessary for magic. There’s so much more to magic: potions, runes, arithmancy. Wands focus magic, but they also limit it. I cast spells, not this empty stick. With pure Void as the conduit, nothing will limit my power!


End file.
